Shay Arick

I am a multidisciplinary artist working across mediums and themes. In the last couple of years, I focused on two art practices that coexist within my studio. These different works live side by side, one practice feeding the other, though the resulting works vary dramatically in both visual approach and content from one another.

 

The first practice is oil pastel drawings. Drawing has become a substantial part of my daily studio work. I used to draw when I began making art, and later drifted away from it into other art mediums. I came back to it when I started teaching children to draw. The spontaneity in which they use oil pastels, with tremendous freedom, and without any inhibitions inspired me to pursue drawings. I started developing intuitive, organically crafted oil pastel drawings, that are born out of my delight in visual play, and connection to pure materiality.

My oil pastel drawings are composites of abstraction and dream-like metaphors contained in compressed spaces. I create them without any advanced plans or research. These drawings hold both intentional and incidental actions, creating a kind of condensed, physical evidence of my dreams and internal conflicts. The works are framed by thick shaped foam frames of various colors and densities, guided, like the drawings, by my visual instincts.

 

I started creating the second and most recent body of work during the pandemic while I was quarantined in the mountains of Jerusalem almost a year ago. I collected flowers and weeds from the fields nearby, and later I cut the stems, connected leaves, and assembled the various parts into new kinds of plants. Each architectural plant was created with intuition, trying to avoid any unnecessary outside and inside noises, delving into a child-like process. I documented each of my new constructions, which became a new photograph series based on Israel flora, titled Second Nature. This practice is constantly evolving and these days I am working on a new series of dried leaves sculptures.