An Interview with Orly Shalem
Hello Orly, It is a pleasure to interview you, Lets introduce you a little bit:
Orly Shalem, a graphic designer for over 20 years, graduate with honors the “Hadassah College”.
Draws more than a decade, mostly abstract’ in a variety of tools and techniques.
Her paintings are emotional and colorful, and as the life itself –sometimes very stormy and expressive and sometimes quiet and lyrical. Orly is a member of Association of Visual Artists and intelligence artists and has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions across the country.
Her paintings are purchased artistic original or prints by interior designers and architects, collectors and private clients.
Please tell us about your art, creating process.
I work in my studio, whilst listening to a variety of musical styles. The music fills me with emotions and amplifies my drive to paint.
My paintings begin from the core of my inner world and emotions, and are then translated to color, splotches, lines, texture and movement. The audience views the paintings through their emotions and their associative world. Through my art, I feel that we are all connected.
What’s your Art background?
I have been a designer for over 20 years. I completed my studies at the Hadassa College with merits. Ten years ago, I began to paint. I focused on the abstract to express myself in color, splotches, lines, and texture, in places where I felt words were lacking….. My painting is an unplanned journey into myself. I create within total freedom and watch how slowly the journey comes together into a painting. Orly, the graphic designer within me, enters the painting, arranges the composition and harmony, until I feel the perfection of the art created.
What’s integral to the work of an artist?
An artist must be sensitive to his environment and his inner senses, be amazed as an innocent child to the beauty of the creation. He must be awed by the little things surrounding him, the scenery, people, sensations, and the moments of grace that surround him at all times.
What has been a seminal experience for you?
In 2007 I displayed my paintings for the first time at the art exhibition in Jerusalem. That was the first time that I publicly displayed my paintings to a large and diversified audience. I was astounded to discover the enormous and powerful impact that abstract paintings have on an audience. I met many people, some religious others not, young and old, from all over the world. They all reacted to the colors, to the splotches, and the textures and were all instinctively moved by the paintings without the need for any translations or explanation of what I had painted. I felt that I had touched them with a universal language that touches the soul, the language of art.
What art do you most identify with?
I mostly paint abstract using various instruments and techniques. I have always been attracted and aroused by the abstract genre, even before I myself began to paint. I love its complexity, the need to study and decipher, to find the personal meaning and understanding, and the beauty of its language, and to always discover more and more each time you look.
Name three artists you’d like to be compared to.
I love William Turner the dramatic, Van Goch the expressionist, but most of all I admire the sensitive Claude Monet. Especially his Water Lily paintings that he painted in his older days, when his eyesight faltered. His painting became less and less detailed and became the foundation to abstract paintings. A few years ago I visited the Moma Museum in New York and saw one of the large originals of his water lily paintings. I stood in awe of all of the beauty. I was almost speechless. I was so emotionally touched by the poetic power of the painting, that tears came to my eyes. That was poetry at its best.
Favorite or most inspirational place in the world?
The sea gives me peace and inspiration
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
Never allow others wishes to enter the creative process, never create a painting per request or order, this destroys the spontaneity and the beauty that exists in the absolute freedom to create something authentic and unique
What is your dream project for the future? Professionally, what’s your goal?
I would love for many paintings to hang in many homes and public places and be shown in large and world-known galleries all over the world. My dream is to continue painting. It would bring me great joy and fulfillment for my paintings to touch as many people as possible.
Thank you for the interview and we wish you continued great artwork!
