MILKA GREEN

MILKA GREEN

Milka Green was born in 1967 in Eilat, the southernmost city in Israel on the Red Sea. She grew up in landscapes of turquoise sea.
At the age of 22, Milka Green moved to Tel Aviv to study at the Avni Art Institute, and then at the Vital School of Art and the Kibbutz Artists Workshop. Green always remembers herself painting, and in recent years the urge to create made her convert her home into a studio and make art the center of her life.
In a short period Milka Green’s work attracted the attention of the Israeli art world and collectors. In the last few years her work appeared in various group exhibitions.
Articles about her work appeared in HDL MAGAZINE Israel, and in “Itsuv – magazine for planning and design”.

Milka Green does not use conventional brushes or drawing tools, but instead she uses her fingers, fingernails, palms and the side of the hand to smear, splash, smooth and thicken colors on the canvas. The contact of her palms and fingers with the paint and the canvas is a dance on its surface performed with varied movements which are essential to the creative process. The direct bodily contact with the physicality of the paint as well as dirtying herself with colors are part of an ecstatic experience, a voyage of smearing color that gives birth to images that were not planned in advance.

Working without preliminary sketches or conceptions of an endpoint, she is guided by intuition and emotion, creating works on large canvases. Green prepares the canvas ground from acrylic paints, ink, and cleaning materials. Paints and ink are poured on the canvas and are spread with the hands and by moving the canvas from side to side to direct the substance to different areas. Sometimes paint and ink are augmented by bleach and acid, which etch the surface and give rise to unusual hues and textures. The work is
a process of trial and error that leads to unexpected results.
The images, like the background, are born during the work process, i.e., the touch of the palms on the completed background. Here, the materials are too unconventional. Coffee grains, which blend with the background create a strip of an animal-like skin and a golden glow. Spices like paprika and turmeric contribute burgundy and orange colors, coffee grains and spices transform the canvas into a breathtaking visual feast: the mundane turned into an elevating spiritual experience. The viewer cannot remain indifferent to the large canvases with the striking colors and shapes. Green compares her experimentation with paintings to the work of an alchemist in his lab – both result in magic.