Featured Artist Rachel Tirosh

Abstract painter Rachel Tirosh shares a collection of work created with bold shapes and color in harmonious balance. Visit her website to see more of her portfolio.

 

 

I started my adventure into the art world late in life. I had a career as an electrical engineer for 20 years. As an engineer, I had to learn and follow specific rules to design electronic systems. High tech criteria for success involves strict adherence to the specifications.

 

 

With art, this is not the case, and I relish the freedom of no right or wrong way to create. Art simply allows freedom of expression without boundaries or rules. The time-out from high-tech started my journey to find my own voice and creative freedom. I ended up in a new career as an artist.

 

 

I create non-representational abstract paintings. I express balance and movement using layers of texture, color, and marks. My process involves layering, scraping off, scratching into the surface, leaving traces of earlier information—a buildup and overlap of successive stages.

 

 

Abstraction allows me the freedom to create without comparing to an existing object—it is all my imagination, my memory, or my dream. Later, it is the interpretation of the viewer.

 

 

The year 2020 changed my way of painting. It started with the initial shock of the pandemic that led to shelter in place, social distancing, and cancellations of all in-person events. My solution was to start taking advantage of virtual life reality.

 

 

That gave me an opportunity to take art classes with faraway artists from the convenience of my garage studio in Sunnyvale, California. The classes made me revisit old paintings and review their colors, mark making, space and edges.

 

 

In my “before” paintings I expressed tranquility by using earthy tones and organic flow of the paint. In my new series of works, from 2020, I dare to use bold shapes in different colors while keeping the harmony and balance.

 

 

Colors give me an upward energy; my studio is my sanctuary and allowed me to balance my life with reality. My way of painting changed from integration to isolation, tranquility to chaos, earthy to bold colors.

 

 

I allowed myself to leave sharp edges between the shapes. The edges, I realized, were a physical reflection of my emotions during the beginning days of the shelter in place. The streets were empty and the stress level was high. In the paintings, tension and happiness coexist. My happiness was being grateful that my family could continue to work and study from home, and that we were all together and safe.

 

 

Naming the painting is always the last thing I do; when the name presents itself to me, I know the painting is done. However, I am always interested in what you, the viewer, sees in the painting. In my art I always ask, “What is behind all that?” It can be a message or a feeling. I create art that reveals and hides, exposes and conceals. I like the viewer to wonder and imagine.

 

Artist Rachel Tirosh invites you to follow her on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.

 

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