Heaven & Earth

Heaven & Earth / Judith Spitzer

Ilana Hamawi has been creating landscapes since the beginning of her path as a painter. In her drawings and paintings she focuses on the sky, and has recently also included the earth. Until around 2006 she worked in oil on canvas. She then made the transition to large charcoal and graphite drawings on paper, a move stemming from a desire to work in a medium offering different qualities: the paper and the touch of the material on it differ from oil on canvas, as is the work pace, which flows more easily. In this exhibition, Hamawi has chosen to show only her charcoal and graphite drawings, but the starting point and the mode of observation of nature and painting are similar in all the techniques she uses.
Hamawi’s works in all media are the result of slow and laborious work creating many layers of material. In addition to the charcoal and the graphite she uses an eraser in her drawings, which she implements to expose what is beneath the surface.
Nature and the artist’s innermost feelings are always the points of departure for her paintings and drawings, intermediated by the photograph, which “freezes” a given moment and directs her in the course of her work. She looks at the photograph and begins to draw what she sees at first glance. Here begins a process of penetration and introspection. The artist is seized by a detail or by an event that appear to her through repeated viewing of the photograph in the course of her work. Hamawi states that the detail or the event are marginal in the photo, but in the course of work they attain great meaning and presence, which she wishes to continue to investigate in order to reach the essence. In other cases, an event whose depths she strives to reach is clear to her from the outset. Sometimes one photograph can be the starting point for several paintings, because it contains various subjects that interest her and cannot be contained in one painting. Each subject starts a new page, in which the same process takes place: a penetrating gaze into the picture; a close self-investigation of the artists’ feelings towards the picture and towards nature. The work process is a long path of seeking and wandering down twisted paths, until the moment of understanding and revelation is reached.
Essence is the key word in Hamawi’s thought and innermost feelings. Through her preoccupation with clouds she wishes to reveal the essence in the physical presence: movement, buoyancy, hovering, falling, encounters between shapes and the penetration of light into the atmosphere. The same is true for the drawings in which “the earth” is also present. The essence is revealed and formulated as a result of the observation of many strata in nature and in the drawing, as if reading between the lines; it reaches perfection when there is concord and unity between the reflection of nature and the reflection of the movements and feelings of the artist. The view outside added to the view inside become one unit, and a nexus between the visible and the invisible takes place. Only then, in her eyes, is the painting or drawing finished. The innermost feelings of the artist are defined by what is seen in the end in the picture.
Standing in front of Hamawi’s works arouses a sense of wonder and the desire to rove about the array of occurrences on the paper. The movement in these works, with clouds and light gliding, hovering, falling, floating from above or below, and the light and shade of white page and black charcoal covering and exposing different parts of the page reveal the essential characteristic of these drawings.
In the graphite drawings the line makes its first appearance: a lateral line of a bridge and vertical lines of pillars supporting it along with the contours of houses which rise above it. Despite these lines’ prominent presence, they are concealed in layers of graphite and remain an allusion on the paper, with gentle flashes of light breaking through between the columns. In this complete array of sky, clouds, buildings at the top with the bridge and field at the bottom, there is a unity of flickering and movement. In every drawing, it appears as though the observation point on the bridge changes.
Blurred boundaries are an additional element characterizing Hamawi’s work. In the graphite drawings this is conspicuous in the diffusion of the separation between sky and earth and in the formation of unity. In the charcoal drawings it is discernible in the unraveling of the outlines of the clouds and leaving them open, as they are constructed layer after layer, one on top of the other, thus creating the potential for movement and the dimension of depth in the drawing.