Interview with Orit Sharbat

2016- bezalel academy 

2017- midrasha leomanut 

2018 – acrylic school 

Orit Sharbat lives and works at Tel Aviv, Israel. She likes to paints with passion and intensity. Her authentic style is marked by expressive, powerful colors, mainly oil or acrylic paint on canvas.

Her paintings consist of multiple thick layers of color. At first sight, they may strike you as calm and harmonic, but when studied closely, the veneer of harmony and tranquility soon gives way to a multi-layered rich labyrinth of colors. Her paintings, as the old adage goes, have more to them than meets the eye. Her sources of inspiration are deeply rooted in western culture, transcending the here and now. Her style can be traced back to the work of artists like Jackson Pollok, Andy Warhol, Max Ernst, Damien Hirst, Mark Rothko, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, René Magritte, and Salvador Dali, while also drawing on music, cinema, and theater.

The visual interpretation she offers to her subjects plays out in the constant tension between figurative and abstract, reality and illusion. Her intensive technique seeks to explore and find out what is the layer that makes reality an illusion and introduces illusion into reality by representing old and new.

Could you please introduce yourself and tell us how you started in the arts? and your first experience in art making?

When did I start to be an artist? Well, I can’t nail down the exact date, weekday or hour when I became an artist; all my life I saw the world in colors and shapes and imagined drawing everything, but the courage to actually do it, came about only when I was 32 – when the passion for art wasn’t expressed and already caused me a great heartache and tickled my ten fingers and could no longer be stopped.

How would you describe yourself and your artwork?

What motivated me to deal with art was, of course, the inner passion to create and work and fulfill, but despite playing the piano and dancing ballet as a child, I never really knew that when I grew up I would be an artist. Instead I completed my BA in media and political science, and my MA in law at university, and managed a huge real estate project of 278 apartments – nine buildings. In fact, I actually tried my best not to deal with art and painting until I realized I was really good at my job and could manage large projects. This success and forward movement, seeing myself create something huge from nothing, from empty plots to buildings, reawakened my urge to paint, to express myself from my inner being to the external world, and no longer repress what I wanted more than anything else – to create.

Where do you get your inspiration from?

My sources of inspiration are internal – I constantly travel the inner spaces of my soul, exploring the inner worlds, seeing emotions in colors laid out in the fields of my soul: this awakes my need and inspiration to paint and create.

What emotions do you hope the viewers experience when looking at your art?

I wish they will feel happy clean pure natural and believing in all the good things in life again.

When do you know that an artwork is finished ?

I just feel it in my inside that this is it .

What has been the most exciting moment in your art career so far?

Oh that's a hard question.. cause with each exhibition i'm getting so happy and excited..like the exhibition at Art Miami or at the Louvre in Paris or at the Whitney Gallery in Chelsea Manhattan... i think the moment when i get offered to exhibit and the moment that i get inside the exhibition and see my paintings on the wall thewse are thr most exciting moments :)

How long does it take to produce one work?

It took months, because i start to work on a painting and than put it in the side cause i have nothing to say to this painting anymore and it just waiting for me until i get inspiration how to continue the painting , and also technically it takes time until the layers gets dry ..so its a long process

What exciting projects are you working on right now?

Now i want to explore different technique on the fabric and different style so its like to have a new baby in you that u haven't see yet and u r so curios to see him.

Email: osharbat@gmail.com

Website: www.oritsharbat.com

Instagram: @oritsharbat

Facebook: Orit Sharbat