Paintings by Anat Betzer
February 3 - 29, 2012

Presented in partnership with Julie M Gallery (Toronto)

In the midst of the intense reality of Israel I create paintings in my downtown Tel-Aviv studio that assert my right to freedom of expression and imagination. My paintings withdraw from local discourse to explore the faraway places and forests of the Diaspora beyond Israel’s borders.

The choice to paint remote landscapes is bolstered by a clear awareness that stepping outside of the familiar yields a fresh perspective on the reality to which we are so accustomed. The forests and landscapes I paint are veiled with translucent layers which drip down and dirty the painting’s surface, implying this is not an innocent landscape. A discussion emerges out of the sentimentality of these unfamiliar landscapes about existential loneliness, infertility, foreignness, and coming to terms with emptiness.Though the conversation is bleak, it is born from hope, and from my unfaltering devotion to beauty and to the sublime. - Anat Betzer

Read the Rooting Communities essay by Research & Communications Officer, Leia Gore which discusses Betzer's work.

About The Artist

Born in 1965, Anat Betzer currently lives and works in Tel Aviv.  After completing her course of study at the Ha’Midrasha School of Art in Ramat-Hasharon, Betzer moved to England, which she used as a base from which to tour Europe and broaden her aesthetic horizons.

Though she launched her career as a leader in the Israeli feminist movement, Anat Betzer’s art making has shifted from conceptual installation to explore the traditional medium of oil paint. Recent work is emblazoned with deciduous trees and forest scenes, meticulously streaky washes that occasionally resolve into pattern, and bisected planar canvases that hint at a collusion between the traditional European Romantic landscape and High Modernism.

Anat Betzer currently lectures on Fine Art at the Midrasha College in Beit-Bearl. She has shown extensively throughout Israel, and her works are also popular in Canada, the United States, and Italy.