Karyn Zamel / Sheine Punim
January 2015
Curator: Gad Apoteker
I first met Karyn Zamel about two years ago when, fortuitously, she came to my workshop at the Artists’ House in Tel Aviv. Within a short time her remarkable talent and great love for art caught my attention.
The life story of Karyn and her family, like that of many other Jews, is a story of wandering: from Poland to England, and then on to New Zealand (where Karyn was born), followed by Australia. She now spends her time in both Australia and Israel, where her children now live. The common thread running through all these migrations is Jewish culture and the Jewish language, Yiddish. The childhood memory of the artist’s mother addressing her daughter affectionately as sheine punim* became a formative memory that shaped Karyn’s personality and now influences her artistic language.
Karyn Zamel likes to paint faces, or as she calls them: “punim”. The different faces she paints actually encompass the history and secret of mankind: culture, science, and war, landscapes and architecture, good and evil, compassion, life and death and innumerable other elements.
Karyn continues a classic artistic tradition. Her work displays the influence of artists such as Avigdor Arikha and Lucien Freud in both subject matter and in the way she works, which entails close observation of the subject she has chosen to paint. Her painting is rapid, immediate, fresh and totally faithful to the model standing, before her. At the same time, her brushwork is sensitive, descriptive and personal and in the images she paints she manages to convey something beyond the mere images themselves…
There is something very human and modest in Karyn’s paintings. With an inborn, talent for clear, unsullied observation, which she has honed over the past two years she does not search for bombastic ideas, but simply allows herself to be captivated by the ‘beautiful face’ of the subject she is painting, be
* in Yiddish: a beautiful face
it a portrait or a sink in the Artists’ House, which also becomes a portrait of
sorts with a very specific identity.
Many of the paintings on display in this exhibition are portraits, most of which centre on myself. I have modelled on several occasions in the past for my students and colleagues, but I found the whole duration of the painting process, as experienced from the other side this time, truly fascinating. The results were rich, varied and exciting. I remember a case some years ago, during my stay in Florence, when I was commissioned to paint the portrait of a person who, during the same period was undergoing psychological treatment for identity issues. I promised this person that I would continue to paint him until such time as he felt that he had found his identity on the canvas. The process was particularly interesting for me, since I believe that a person has countless faces, which are difficult to capture in one painting. Similarly, the way that Karyn chose to concentrate on one object in her environment seemed perfectly natural to me.
Focusing on one specific model is not so unusual in the history of art. Perhaps the best example is the well-known realist artist Andrew Wyeth, who, between the years 1971 and 1985, produced more than 250 paintings and drawings of his neighbour Helga, who modelled for him.
More recently, Karyn has begun to paint portrait miniatures, which make up the central installation of the exhibition. These miniature paintings, which may be reminiscent of a stamp collection, feature images of people whom Karyn met and sketched in her daily life.
These portraits have something intimate about them, almost like the sort of family pictures displayed on the mantelpiece or on furniture in the living room. The diminutiveness of the pictures is enchanting. To hold a picture like this in your hand is like holding a precious jewel that is, at the same time, a simple, human object.
This is precisely the elusive feeling we so long for and which is so often missing in contemporary art.
Gad Apoteker, Curator
“My painting is the result of perseverance and observation. I do not use photographs as an aid as I feel they would produce inferior results for painting realism. A photo is flat and doesn’t reveal what the eye observes. Neither do I paint from imagination but wait for the opportunity when a model sits before me. There is nothing more reliable than observing the live model although there is always interpretation and I enjoy this process. It is a kind of aura that is present between me and the subject that I paint.
Over the years I have painted people every day, observing their reality and trying to capture their true essence. It may be what we call developing the eye of a painter. I see this journey like infinity. The main wall in my exhibition where there are dozens of miniature portraits hanging, is like a diary, recording those I have encountered in my daily life. People have commented that my portraits reveal
a beauty in the faces and I am satisfied to hear this because there is much violence and aggression in life and art today and I feel a need to focus on the positive side of every persona.
Much of my time for this exhibition focused on one particular model, Gad Apoteker. I agree with the belief shared in Ancient Greece and during the Renaissance that when studying one head, one learns in effect to paint all heads. I intend to continue this research in my painting and look forward to the coming days.”
Karyn Zamel
