Anat Rozenson Ben-Hur is a Jerusalem-born painter who lives and works in Moshav Natur in the Golan Heights. Characterized by a wealth of colors and patterns, her works portray different everyday life scenes that blend reality with fiction. With a skillful hand, she moves between interior and outdoor spaces, between her home and natural landscape, as she formulates new scenes. Pain and beauty, flatness and depth, control and freedom – all mix together in Rozenson’s work through her bold color palette and meticulous aesthetics. Under the veil of beauty and ornamentation, the paintings delve into human questions, conflicts, and pain.

The exhibition features paintings that represent different spheres of Rozenson Ben-Hur’s life: the studio, home, everyday objects, landscapes and family members, all make their way into the works in new arrangements. The views of the Golan Heights, seen from her studio’s window or on outdoor hikes, wash over the paintings: golden expanses, basalt rocks, water, and wild nature. The unsettling amalgamation of pastoral nature and a sense of looming threat is reflected in a painting created after October 7, titled 7 KM As the Crow Flies. On what looks like a map, the moshav’s houses are painted in pastel hues, the Sea of Galilee is visible in the distance, and in the middle ground: grazing cows, ruins of abandoned villages, missiles crossing the border, mine fields, and fighter jets. The beautiful place where she lives has become a border area under constant threat.

The space of her studio appears in several works, offering a personal perspective on the complexity of the creative process. One of the works portrays the artist sitting in a boat, drawing a continuous line in space. The female figure sails a ship in the heart of the studio “as though she feels she is in a struggle for survival, trying to find the path of truth, with a sense of calling and momentous responsibility,” the artist writes, describing her internal struggles as she explores creative processes and examines the pictorial language. Below the water line, squares upon squares of patterns, the cornerstones of her work since her days as a student at Bezalel.

The patterns in Rozenson Ben-Hur’s works are drawn from the domestic world of textile or wallpaper patterns, with which she constructs the landscape. Like a grid that holds on to all parts of the painting so that it would not fall apart – the patterns block the horizon, flatten the depth, and fill the empty space. They serve her as camouflage, distancing, the deception of seductive beauty and rich colors. The interplay between different perspectives, and between creating depth and flattening, are the key characteristics of her pictorial language.

For years, Israeli art rejected the use of beauty and decoration in painting (e.g., ornaments and patterns). “Israeli modernism did not attribute any truth-value to artistic decorations, and even dismissed them as empty embellishments designed to seduce the bourgeoisie, meaning – a contradiction to the expression of truth,” writes Gideon Ofrat, despite the fact that early Bezalel artists like E. M. Lilien or Ze’ev Raban made extensive use of visual ornamentation. In recent years, we are witnessing a shift against this hegemony in the local art scene, manifested in the works of artists who put patterns and decoration center stage.

Anat Rozenson Ben-Hur painstakingly paints the pattern with a brush, without using any stencils or printing. This is a formulaic, labor-intensive, and repetitive movement that represents all the repetitive actions required of women for the maintenance of their home and family. The feminine perspective on the role of women in the domestic space is reflected in different works in the exhibition: The figure of a woman standing and watering the foundations of a house under construction, or a woman standing on a container holding a giant carpet beater. “These works address the question of the essence of the home; longing for it, its strengths and challenges for me as a woman and a mother. The home is a place that offers a sense of belonging and security, but also requires a lot of maintenance and hard work to keep it as such,” she writes.

In a new series that includes quick drawings on paper, the artist tries to directly touch the memories of her mother for the first time. Anat, who lost her mother when she was 15, draws photos from the family album, which capture her relationship with her mother. Through the act of painting, she approaches the blocked past from her current perspective as a mother herself, wishing to touch the absent-present memory of her mother, who was the first to recognize her artistic skills and encourage her to pursue them.

The attempt to break through the defense walls of memory during the process of working on the current exhibition blended with the horrors of the war, and sense of existential dread due to the proximity to the border. Like carpets interwoven with the threads of personal, domestic, and sometimes even national narratives, her works took shape through the synthesis of painting, shape, and color. Through her feminine gaze she observes, deconstructs, processes, and forms the patterns of life in this complicated place.

Michal Shachnai, July 2024