Israeli artist Dana Zalztman had wanted to work with Arcadia Contemporary since her days studying at Italy’s Florence Academy of Art and now, a few years after catching their interest, she is having her first solo show at the New York City gallery.
Pile of Pillows, oil on panel, 43 x 51 in.
Zaltzman creates exquisite still life paintings that highlight the beauty in the ordinary—a pile of pillows, fuzzy dandelion heads, a feather atop a watermelon, a rag and pail—and manages to infuse them with an almost aching poignancy.
“The simple truth of everyday objects is what fascinates me,” says Zaltzman. “Every such object has a story and the older and rustier the object, the more interesting its story. I don’t always know what the story is, I just know that it is there, and the viewer can take it into [their] own worlds and stories…I just show that the story exists. I used to not like painting still life at all, until one of my teachers told me that you can tell an entire story through objects. That sentence has accompanied me ever since.”
Dandelions, oil on panel, 9 x 12 in.
For pieces like Watermelon and Feather, Zaltzman was excited by the idea of painting the watermelon, with its bright green hues and varying shapes in the rind. “But only the watermelon felt boring to me,” she says. “I immediately came up with the idea of the feather, the light versus the heavy. Two opposites create harmony. It already raises questions for the viewer.”
Zaltzman arranges her objects before her, then paints from life in natural light. In her opinion, illuminating her subject matter with an artificial light source could never compare.
Watermelon and Feather, oil on panel, 15½ x 19½ in.
It took Zaltzman a long time to arrange the composition that resulted in Pile of Pillows, a mountain of shadow-dimpled pillows in different degrees of washed-out white, their plainness offset by an ornately tiled floor. “At first glance, it’s just a pile of pillows—quiet, soft, familiar,” she says. “But the longer I look at it, together with the symphony of endless shades of white, a world of movements, layers and memory begins to emerge. A pile of pillows, though completely still, almost always conveys a sense of motion, curves, folds, gentle falls…It’s like a dance frozen in a single moment. The pillows rest atop one another, surrendering to each other’s weight, forming a composition of softness and presence. There’s something intimate and domestic in them—warm and familiar, yet silent and mysterious. Physical softness meets sculptural structure, and this contrast creates a complete sense of harmony.”
Bucket, oil on panel, 31½ x 21½ in.
Zaltzman admits that sometimes she chooses to paint something simply because she finds it beautiful, but a lot of time the answers to her questions of “why” come later. One of the reasons she likes painting dandelions is that it takes her back to childhood memories of blowing on them and watching the seeds float away on the wind. “For me, they symbolize simplicity, the simplest and innocent moments of happiness,” she says. About the present piece she adds, “There is a union of opposites, light and darkness, heaviness and lightness, a solid strong silver bowl containing the softest, most delicate and fragile thing that could fall apart with the slightest breeze. Opposites face one another in an eternal battle, but they are also intertwined, and together they turn into a harmonious whole.”
Zaltzman’s latest still lifes are on view through November 9 at Arcadia Contemporary. —
Arcadia Contemporary 421 W. Broadway New York, NY 10012 • (646) 861-3941 www.arcadiacontemporary.com
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