Tavalina
Israeli artist Rinat "Tavalina" Kishony was born in Haifa, Israel in 1966.
She graduated from the Israel Institute of Technology in 1992 with a Bachelor of Architecture, and later moved to Tel Aviv, where she worked for several years. During this time, she won a competition to redesign the multimedia museum dedicated to the former Israeli Prime Minister, Ben Gurion.
After a personal crisis in her 30th year, she began to paint. Rinat abandoned architecture and devoted herself to her art.
At the same time, she embarked on a thrilling journey of personal discovery. She left Israel and set off, traveling the world – from India to Costa Rica to Guatemala to Italy. After ten years abroad, Rinat returned to Israel with her family, where she continues painting and presenting her work, as well as teaching art.
In her own words
“I love the power of color, and my creative process alternates between different contrasts – spontaneous vs. exact work, cold vs. warm colors, fast vs. slow, opaque vs. transparent, and a constructive vs. destructive process.
Gradually, I search for a new balance, a new order.
The paintings are constructed in layers, in a constant movement of exploration on the edge of a cliff.
I try to find in me the consent to get lost, to meet the unknown, to destroy - then appears discovery and surprise, and the finished paintings are vivid and full of energy.”
Rinat is beautifully articulate about her complex, multilayered creative process - achieved not with a brush, but primarily with a palette knife. This allows her constructive approach - the build up - and, eventually, the destructive approach of reduction and removal to achieve the final result.
She notes: “The white canvas, for me, is the embodiment of freedom: it contains an infinite number of possibilities. That is why, at the beginning of the creative process, I must explore a topic, a question, define the rules of the game, and thus limit the boundaries of my process. A conversation then arises between my internal feelings and what is materializing on the canvas, like a continuous melody.”
Morning Glory
Tavalina has described her painting process as “the essence of her life, as an endless journey of research and discovery”. That journey clearly begins for her in interiority, and in contemplation, before expanding outward.
This lends a poignancy to her domestic still lifes, views she has created or noticed within her home. Explorations in this series focus on blocks of color: warm, intimate, and grounded.
Summer Journey
Tavalina has repeatedly stressed her physical connections to the natural environment, both personally and in her work. Her “years of wandering” have allowed her to be both participant and observer, attached and detached.
Those feelings are clearly expressed in this canvas: disjointed blocks of contrasting colors are initially startling, and then - as the viewer’s eye grows more comfortable - harmonious.
Bardolino
A painter known for her rich use of bold color, Tavalina achieves a remarkably different effect with a more restrained palette, as shown in this canvas.
A quieter, more intimate atmosphere - one suffused with calm - is the subject here, the golden tones imbuing a sense of warmth. Even the title, “Bardolino”, implies familiarity, affection, and connection.
Little Corner
It is easy to admire Tavalina’s still life scenes for their mastery of line and color, but it’s important to note the feelings expressed: there is a wistful sense of isolation and slight disjointedness - of being on a tilted, angular plan physically and emotionally.
She clearly expresses through these detailed, abstracted interiors her own work both to lose herself and to find herself, to search for her balance and to create her order through art.
On the Hill
While a paint brush gives greater control to an artist, the palette knife - with its rigid, sharp edges - allows the painter greater freedom to “sculpt” the paint into dynamic forms.
Note here how the surface of the landscape - the mountains, the lakes, the fields - have an almost three dimensional texture, each stroke creating a shape distinct from its neighbor but melding into a unified, abstracted whole.
Jerusalem
There’s a delightfully and boldly casual approach to the sacred and weighty landscape in this work: almost breezily titled Jerusalem, as though that were any other city, Tavalina explores here an angular view of the literal coming together of the natural and built environments.
Above those right angles of convergence rises a gilded dome, both above and embedded within both of the discrete settings.
Villa Strada
The richly layered arrangement of this scene underpins Tavalina’s considered approach to building a composition. Her additive process -creating registers and layers of paint and color - results in an abstracted, almost geometric, framework.
Overlain on this structure is exuberant color, and a sense of both motion and stillness. Note the mirroring of the choppy sea and the blue fabric, dancing in the wind.
Paciano
Tavalina’s architectural training gives her an unusual and valuable vantage point as a painter; her intuitive understanding of the built environment allows her to “sketch” in vivid detail with her palette knife the diversity of the buildings around her.
Yet there is a quiet and contemplative mood here - devoid of people, this corner of the city exists in concrete and stone - yet is framed by exuberantly expressive nature in shades of brown.
Morning Light
Tavalina has described her painting process as “the essence of her life, as an endless journey of research and discovery”. That journey clearly begins for her in interiority, and in contemplation, before expanding outward.
This lends a poignancy to her domestic still lifes, views she has created or noticed within her home. Explorations in this series focus on blocks of color: warm, intimate, and grounded.
Take a look at our currently available original paintings and prints
