David Avisar spent five years secluded in an artist colony where he worked in a round-the-clock creative frenzy. But when he finally slowed down and pictured his life, he realized it was nothing more than a blank canvas
QUIET IMPACT Avisar’s paintings are rich with Jewish motifs. A Jewish man alone in the forest communing with his Creator in solitude. A group of Jews praying in Uman. Landscapes of the Holy Land. “Many of my paintings are hung up in homes of nonreligious families” Avisar continues. “And who can fathom the impact that a painting of Jews dancing on Simchas Torah for example could have on an innocent Jewish child who had never been exposed to a shul on Yom Tov?” (Photos: Yaakov Lederman)
I t took 33 years and one night for artist David Avisar to find Hashem.
It happened quite suddenly one Shabbos in the home of a kind and friendly Jew in the heart of Los Angeles where he experienced for the first time in his life a genuine Shabbos meal. “And then it simply happened” Avisar recalls. “I knew nothing about G-d hadn’t had Him in my life at all was a totally ignorant Jew but right there and then I knew that He was there all along waiting for me to connect with Him and expecting me to do something worthwhile with my life.”
If art reflects a person’s inner world it’s obvious from the richness and variety of David Avisar’s creations that his own life has been a series of twists and turns. A meeting with Avisar in his Beit Shemesh studio — after first clearing out a place to sit amid hundreds of paintings and stunning masterpieces — is an opportunity to view his life through the different styles he incorporates. “Whatever my soul produces — that’s what you’ll find here ” he says.
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