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mixed media/oil artist and sculptor
Born in Israel.
In 1969, Atara studied Sculpture at the Acadamia Della Arte in Rome under world known sculptor Emilio Greco.
In London, she studied the human form in various schools; in New York, spent some time at the Art Students League and, in Los Angeles, at Los Angeles City College.
In 1971, Atara moved to new experiences in South Africa, studying full-time under well-known artists, Bill Ainslie, in his own school, for six years, and Noel Bisseker at the Johannesburg College of Art, and generally accumulated a great deal of experience concerning her deep interest in the meanings of color and its relationship to observed form. The culturally integrated tribal life, particularly that of the Bushman people, manifested in the richly textured lifestyles and artifacts which she encountered in South Africa, to a great extent shaped her present artistic expression, in which color, as always, and the primeval play important roles. Late in 1979, Atara settled in San Diego, California, where she studied under Gary Hansmann, who proved to be a prime catalyst in her efforts to translate her African experiences into oil and mixed media, and is at present working from her studio in La Mesa.
Atara is a member of the San Diego Artists Guild and San Diego Art Institute, and her work is in private collections in South Africa, San Diego, Los Angeles and Palo Alto, California, Olympia and Seattle, Washington State, Ohio, Colorado, Utah, Chicago, IL, New Haven, Connecticut, New York, Mexico and Israel.
In 1969, Atara studied Sculpture at the Acadamia Della Arte in Rome under world known sculptor Emilio Greco.
In London, she studied the human form in various schools; in New York, spent some time at the Art Students League and, in Los Angeles, at Los Angeles City College.
In 1971, Atara moved to new experiences in South Africa, studying full-time under well-known artists, Bill Ainslie, in his own school, for six years, and Noel Bisseker at the Johannesburg College of Art, and generally accumulated a great deal of experience concerning her deep interest in the meanings of color and its relationship to observed form. The culturally integrated tribal life, particularly that of the Bushman people, manifested in the richly textured lifestyles and artifacts which she encountered in South Africa, to a great extent shaped her present artistic expression, in which color, as always, and the primeval play important roles. Late in 1979, Atara settled in San Diego, California, where she studied under Gary Hansmann, who proved to be a prime catalyst in her efforts to translate her African experiences into oil and mixed media, and is at present working from her studio in La Mesa.
Atara is a member of the San Diego Artists Guild and San Diego Art Institute, and her work is in private collections in South Africa, San Diego, Los Angeles and Palo Alto, California, Olympia and Seattle, Washington State, Ohio, Colorado, Utah, Chicago, IL, New Haven, Connecticut, New York, Mexico and Israel.
Speech given by Atara at the Pac.ific Beach Library Lecture 17th June 2000
Hello, thanks for coming. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mark for hanging this show so beautifully. I’ve had so many compliments.
Ok – the talk I am giving today will be a more personal version of my resume and statement, which I am sure most of you, will have read by now. I am dividing it into two parts, one dealing with Africa and the other, Israel.
Before I start I would like to show you my video, made a few years ago by an independent producer who used to work for PBS. It was broadcast nationally from New York on an Israeli program, shown in Santa Monica, and has been aired for the past 2 years in San Diego on the Learning Channel. I also passed around some copies of the script, which should help you if you have any problems.
Now, as you read in my resume, I eventually arrived in S.A. in the early 70’s and after a short while discovered a wonderful art school lead by a visionary artist by the name of Bill Ainslie, with whom I stayed six years full time. He was a wonderful colorist and was responsible for starting me on the road of being aware of color and its relationship to observed form. He taught as to be utterly faithful to what we saw and respond in a sensational, not intellectual, way.
He was killed in a traffic accident on his way back from a seminar in Zimbabwe, and I have dedicated many of my paintings to him.
What I also discovered during this time was the air, light, and the land of Africa, as well as the culturally integrated tribal life of its peoples, particularly that of the Bushman (San) people.
How many of you have seen the movie “The Gods Must Be Crazy?” Well, the main character is a Bushman. They live a very short life and the actor must have been very young. A study of the DNA of these people, made in San Francisco, indicated that they are the oldest in terms of “purity”, going back some 10, 000 years.
I was particularly interested in the Bushman cave paintings, their colors, their layering (new over old) which inspired the “palimpsest” quality of many of my pieces, handprints laid over the paintings to establish the ownership of their creators.
Cave paintings is a lost art today; the last artist died some time ago and the cave paintings are slowly being destroyed by the weather and tourism.
What fascinated me also was their adaptability to their desert environment; their jewelry made from ostrich eggshells bitten into small beads by their teeth is an example of their interaction with nature. I am wearing one of these necklaces.
Another example is the way water is stored in the empty ostrich egg shells, buried in the sand.
Our collection of African Masks is also a great source of inspiration to me in terms of images, shape, color, and texture. Like Picasso and Modigliani I don’t look any further than that.
I will point out some of these aspects as I go round the paintings later with you.
The second part of my talk takes us to another part of the world that is dear to my heart, the Southern part of Israel.
Late in 1950 a group of anthropologists led by Professor Yigael – Yadin found some caves near Masada, a very important site in Jewish history, a place where the besieged population of a village at the top of a mountain committed suicide rather than submit to the Romans.
These caves were extremely difficult to get to because of the terrain, which is why they were discovered so late. In them they found extremely well preserved glassware, kitchen utensils, and most importantly for me, tattered remains of textiles, all dating to about 135 CE. Altogether 34 varieties of colors were found in these textiles. These were created with basically the use of only 3 dyes- yellow, red and blue, taken from plant roots and minerals; these are basically the colors I use for most of my pieces.
Because of the similarity of these remnants to the materials used on African masks, I had found a link between my Israeli background, with its childhood memories of striped talit and robes worn by members of the orthodox religious sect and my African experiences. And a way to express that connection in the textures, banded colors and materials I use.
Hello, thanks for coming. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mark for hanging this show so beautifully. I’ve had so many compliments.
Ok – the talk I am giving today will be a more personal version of my resume and statement, which I am sure most of you, will have read by now. I am dividing it into two parts, one dealing with Africa and the other, Israel.
Before I start I would like to show you my video, made a few years ago by an independent producer who used to work for PBS. It was broadcast nationally from New York on an Israeli program, shown in Santa Monica, and has been aired for the past 2 years in San Diego on the Learning Channel. I also passed around some copies of the script, which should help you if you have any problems.
Now, as you read in my resume, I eventually arrived in S.A. in the early 70’s and after a short while discovered a wonderful art school lead by a visionary artist by the name of Bill Ainslie, with whom I stayed six years full time. He was a wonderful colorist and was responsible for starting me on the road of being aware of color and its relationship to observed form. He taught as to be utterly faithful to what we saw and respond in a sensational, not intellectual, way.
He was killed in a traffic accident on his way back from a seminar in Zimbabwe, and I have dedicated many of my paintings to him.
What I also discovered during this time was the air, light, and the land of Africa, as well as the culturally integrated tribal life of its peoples, particularly that of the Bushman (San) people.
How many of you have seen the movie “The Gods Must Be Crazy?” Well, the main character is a Bushman. They live a very short life and the actor must have been very young. A study of the DNA of these people, made in San Francisco, indicated that they are the oldest in terms of “purity”, going back some 10, 000 years.
I was particularly interested in the Bushman cave paintings, their colors, their layering (new over old) which inspired the “palimpsest” quality of many of my pieces, handprints laid over the paintings to establish the ownership of their creators.
Cave paintings is a lost art today; the last artist died some time ago and the cave paintings are slowly being destroyed by the weather and tourism.
What fascinated me also was their adaptability to their desert environment; their jewelry made from ostrich eggshells bitten into small beads by their teeth is an example of their interaction with nature. I am wearing one of these necklaces.
Another example is the way water is stored in the empty ostrich egg shells, buried in the sand.
Our collection of African Masks is also a great source of inspiration to me in terms of images, shape, color, and texture. Like Picasso and Modigliani I don’t look any further than that.
I will point out some of these aspects as I go round the paintings later with you.
The second part of my talk takes us to another part of the world that is dear to my heart, the Southern part of Israel.
Late in 1950 a group of anthropologists led by Professor Yigael – Yadin found some caves near Masada, a very important site in Jewish history, a place where the besieged population of a village at the top of a mountain committed suicide rather than submit to the Romans.
These caves were extremely difficult to get to because of the terrain, which is why they were discovered so late. In them they found extremely well preserved glassware, kitchen utensils, and most importantly for me, tattered remains of textiles, all dating to about 135 CE. Altogether 34 varieties of colors were found in these textiles. These were created with basically the use of only 3 dyes- yellow, red and blue, taken from plant roots and minerals; these are basically the colors I use for most of my pieces.
Because of the similarity of these remnants to the materials used on African masks, I had found a link between my Israeli background, with its childhood memories of striped talit and robes worn by members of the orthodox religious sect and my African experiences. And a way to express that connection in the textures, banded colors and materials I use.
