Women portraits

‘Painting Outside the Box’ by Ilan Vizgan

The flute raises it’s voice / what is it’s story? /   is it bad news or good ones or what? / It’s about everything and all A poem by  Nathan Alterman/ summer celebration

Mirit Ben-Nun’s paintings escape common description. An objective observation might describe it as contemporary art, though created by an upbeat young female artist, it is far from contemporary. This art possesses no “present day”  defining elements.  Mirit’s paintings speak in a distant dialect seemingly of another era and location.  By trying to pinpoint this time and place, we find ourselves wandering about without a solid grasping point.  Her paintings are laced with a fire-like sensuality and striking colors.  The naive and archetypal characteristics remind us of folk art.  Reality is lost within the ‘erroneous’ size ratio of the numerous imagery, similarly to tribal and native art in Africa, Oceania and Australia.  The surface is laboriously worked and replicated similarly to rug weaving techniques.   Motifs of Western Pop can be found in many of the paintings. This combination of Primeval motifs and Western Modern Art creates cultural and historical tensions between here and there, then and now.   Formatively speaking the paintings are schematically divided into colorful segments with no intermediate transitions.  Strong and clear boundaries outline the different areas, each is populated with a happening, opposing or complementing the one next to it.  In this fashion, for example, round shapes are confronted with geometric ones or human images with those of animals and plants.  Often the paintings are outlined with a   ‘frame’  thereby uniting the parts and creating an enclosure, like a window within a window.  As a result, unconventional compositions are created and shatter the conventional formula of the “Uniformity of subject, shape & color”.   The rule breaking strengthens the untamed quality of these ‘uncivilized’ paintings.

In the center of Ben-Nun’s paintings stands the image of the woman and the relationship between the sexes. Women are displayed as curvaceous, seductive images often in dancing poses.  The dance is used as a metaphor for courting and seduction; the thick red lips, at times heart- shaped, symbolize passion and love.  When it seems that the implicit allure isn’t sufficient,  the female image is portrayed in a frontal wide stance, in a composition that reminds us of the letter W.   But when the two images meet, the feminine and the masculine, the unification is complete; melding into each other, the images’ side view completely overlaps. When in a seated position the whole shape converts into the letter M emphasizing the complimenting opposites.  The protagonists – women and men – are accompanied by secondary characters;  symbolic images of especially fish, hands (the Hamsa) and eyes.  Those are prevalent in Middle East cultures and represent fertility, luck and protection from the evil eye.  Their presence in the paintings, alongside the lovers, implies that the matter at hand is not barren erotica and carnal passion, but genuine love that yearns for a home, family and the raising of offsprings.

With a determination that reaches obsession, Mirit Ben-Nun keeps on returning to her art of meticulous decoration. A strong presence of primitive ornamentation provides the artwork with a tribal facet on one hand and a feminine touch on the other, encompassing embroidery, bead threading and weaving among others. Ben- Nuns beautifying urge carries within it an archetypal strata, mythic at times, which empowers her authentic expression.

Dr. Gidion Ofrat

Mirit Ben-Nun has developed a style that is manifested as movement, rhythmic repetition and the speed of objects on the canvas. In the process the artist often asks difficult questions or invites reflection without providing easy answers. Her curiosity, her open mind and a commitment to dialogue are her best tools for addressing her artwork.

These art pieces often challenge our ideas about how art should look or behave.

Her art is not based on what was said before and does not depend on the Academies of Art; it breaks traditions, and does not imitate the real world, it transmits the inner world of its creator. Through imprecise and significant characters, it radiates different ideas about the reality of the world and of human dreams.

Mirit transmits clearly with a unique focus the concept that art is not separated from life and the real world in which we live.

Dora Woda

Mirit Ben-Nun develops a style where he tries to demonstrate the manifestation of movement, rhythmic repetition and the speed of objects on the canvas.In the process the artist often asks difficult questions or causes reflection without giving easy answers. Her curiosity, your open mind and a commitment to dialogue are her best tools to address your artworks.

These works often challenge our ideas about how art should look or how it should behave. Her art is not based on what was said before and does not depend on the academies of art, breaks traditions, and does not imitate the real world, it is an art that transmits through its works the inner world of the artist. Through imprecise and significant characters, it radiates different ideas about the reality of the world of human dreams.Mirit gives us a clear idea that art is not separated from life and from the real world in which we live, reflects thoughts with style and unique focus.

Mirit Ben-Nun uses lines and points as an expressive resource and does so by exploiting nuances and associations to their fullest. Some forms follow the same direction and others change constantly, even urgently. Its language is visual and independent of its expressiveness; it lies in the value and organization of its elements.

The ‘things’ of the visual world are unimportant, the point is the achievement of reproduction of the world and human nature. Constantly encouraging creativity. In this case pointillism conveys emotions by the effect of using color, points, lines and thus capturing the attention of the observer.

Dora Woda

Mirit Ben-Nun dizzyingly integrates all of this into her private career, a colorful and spectacular painting, which ranges from Aboriginal diligence to feminist consciousness. Ben-Nun adorns the successful women with a tremendous abundance of colors and patterns, generously and with joy of life she wraps them with ‘mandorlas’ (almond-like shape), which surround each other and create “Babushkas”.

Tali Tamir

‘Your Own Dream’ is a modern Pop art style exhibit of paintings of women, by the feminine spirit of the artist, Mirit Ben-Nun. The painting series of the women was created and inspired by the book “Presence. Impact. Leadership”, and the majority of the women painted in the exhibit participate in this book by Dr. Efrat Liani, published by Kineret Zemorah Dvir.

Mirit Ben-Nun paints women, who are called nowadays “career women”; independent women, who are not dependent on men or husbands, who have their own room, their own office, own studio (their own bank account) and their own dream. The writer Virginia Wolf believed that it all begins with “your own room”, a defined space, even a small one, that has four walls and a door and is all yours; there you can recognize the dream, and be who you are. The women Mirit chose to paint also have a key phrase that leads them in life: “Go your way and leave the doubters behind” (Lior Finkel-Perl); “Put an anchor of ability within you” (Imi Eiron) and also more concise messages like that of Tamar Ish-Shalom: “Do not forget to breathe” or of the economist Karnit Flug, former governor of The Bank of Israel: “Economy is not everything.” How true. Mirit Ben-Nun dizzyingly integrates all of this into her private career, a colorful and spectacular painting, which ranges from Aboriginal diligence to feminist consciousness. Ben-Nun adorns the successful women with a tremendous abundance of colors and patterns, generously and with joy of life she wraps them with ‘mandorlas’ (almond-like shape), which surround each other and create “Babushkas”. Like the women, so do Ben-Nun’s models split unexpectedly, creating intersections and interchanges withing the painting, hinting at new paths. These successful, independent, opinionated women receive a gift from Mirit: they are raised to a level of energy rich in particles, but one that plants them in the heart of it all, they are both the citron and the nucleus. They are the smallest babushka, the princess.

Mirit Ben-Nun, an independent woman, who set out without support and without orderly studies, stubbornly made her own way, her own dream, added to her a parade of women, who like Einat Paz, think “better things happen to those who do”.

Tali Tamir

‘Your Own Dream’ is a modern Pop art style exhibit of paintings of women, by the feminine spirit of the artist, Mirit Ben-Nun. The painting series of the women was created and inspired by the book “Presence. Impact. Leadership”, and the majority of the women painted in the exhibit participate in this book by Dr. Efrat Liani, published by Kineret Zemorah Dvir.