Play of Light and Shadow
Here are the Remarks I made at the opening:
Much later, I decided that I wanted to paint like Paul Gauguin, and to run away to the south Pacific and to live on the beach with a young girl, but my wife wouldn’t let me!
So, in time, I found that I had to learn to combine my romantic fantasies with the mundane, bourgeois reality of being a middle class Jewish Professor of science. I leave it to you to judge how successful I have been at this difficult compromise.
My fascination with shadows and ephemeral effects was stimulated when I was lying in bed with a cold, and looking up at the ceiling I noticed an incredible pattern of bright lights coming through the slats of the window. Since the sun was high above in the sky I wondered how this was possible, so like a good scientist I sought the origin of the phenomenon, and sure enough I saw that the source was the reflection of the sun on the windscreens of the cars parked in the car park below. The drivers did not know that they were also accidental artists producing this show for me. The pattern changed depending upon the time of day, the intensity of the sun and where the cars were parked. I decided to paint a version of this show, and then embarked on a series of paintings that make up the exhibit today, namely “the play of light and shadow.”
I am very grateful to Zehava Kalman the curator of the show and Michal Sadan, who is the Manager of Beit Belgia. They have helped me immensely to make this show possible. I am also very grateful to my friend and colleague, Israel Ringel, Chairman of the Pharmacology Department at HU, for giving me the opportunity to come and stay here in Beit Belgia every week, and for being a Jew who is able to say “next week in Jerusalem.”
I thank you all for coming to my show, and I hope that you will find something of interest in my paintings, something imaginative, strange and beautiful.