Hi,
My name is Yifat Nachshon. I am an artist, illustrator and art teacher.
The main subjects of my paintings are landscapes and plant life. The recurring theme in my art is the love for the desert in particular, and for Israel’s unique and varied natural environments in general. I work in a variety of mediums including aquarelle and gouache on paper as well as acrylic and oil on canvas and wood.
I grew up in Tel Aviv, Israel, always close to the city, the beaches and the people. I studied at the Meimad School of Visual Arts in Tel Aviv. And at the Open University, for a degree in arts, I trained in figurative painting workshops at the Station Studio and at the Kibbutz Artists’ workshops. My life was full with artistic enterprise including teaching, illustrating books, presenting work in exhibitions, and leading activities in the community. But after this long urban period, I longed for a quiet place far from the noise and the crowds, close to the earth, close to nature and close to myself… So, I moved to live in an earthen house in the tranquil desert. Here I walk through the wilderness.
In the seemingly barren landscape, I discover hidden vibrant worlds –flowers and herbs, butterflies and rodents, living between the rocks and fissures of the dry floodplain gullies.When I lift my eyes to the horizon, I am enchanted by shadows of the clouds cast on the bare treeless hills, for I can only see those shadows here. Then I return to the studio to give my own reflection of the colors and the shapes.I paint the rolling dunes under the endless sky in flowing water colors (paradoxically so, for this is a land in which water rarely flows).
I continue to illustrate, mainly children’s books. I am a great fan of folk tales and I myself tell stories with pictures between the lines of written words. These days I mainly focus on abstract painting of desert landscapes and botanical illustrations. Walking through the dunes and desert streams, I transcribe the landscape, documenting unique flowers and plants that grow here, with the words of Henry
David Thoreau guiding me:
“I miss a crooked and old road that no one walks, that leads out of the city…
a road that leads to the ends of the earth, where the soul is free.”
