All tagged Giora Carmi
To enter the recent work of Giora Carmi is to stand before a practice that is, at once, playful and deeply metaphysical. His paintings, executed in watercolor, gouache, pencil, and other intimate mediums, are not simply images placed upon paper. They are meditations made visible. They unfold as maps of inner states, constellations of color and line that seem to trace both the subconscious and the act of becoming conscious.
All my paintings come with poems that "read" the paintings. It is not a definition-like reading, but open and alive (hopefully), as all art is. Looking at art is like trying to understand your life through beauty. And I agree: It is the right thing to do. Your individual sense of beauty goes much deeper into the truth than any analysis. Art making and viewing, when done with awareness of how our sense of beauty is responding, is healing, both psychologically and spiritually. It even has an effect on health.
The artwork of Giora Carmi is not merely seen; it is felt. His use of color and form—erratic yet harmonious, chaotic yet serene—echoes the dichotomies of human experience. His brushwork, liberated from the constraints of figurative accuracy, invites a form of visual wandering that encourages the mind to drift between the lines, to find meaning in the abstract. This freedom is reflective of Carmi’s own life, a journey through various vocations and avocations—from a distinguished career as a graphic designer and illustrator in both Israel and the United States, including work for high-profile publications like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, to his impactful roles as an educator and art therapist.
Everything that we encounter, as we live with active senses, creates, in response, patterns of movements in the subtle energies of our body. There are the obvious ones, the emotions that we recognize and that have been given names in our culture, like sadness, worry, joy, etc., and there are many more, to which we have not given names. That’s where it starts to be interesting for me. This is where I go with my art.
