Before he could paint the people and places he met, Chen Bachar learned the craft at the Avni Institute of Art and Design and studied visual communication at the Holon Institute of Technology. Then came the journeys.
When ARTiculAction Art Review opened its interview with him, the first question was about exactly that: what a formal training and years of travel did to his evolution as an artist. The oil painting The Fisher Man, which appeared in the same feature, is a good place to see that answer at work.
The Fisher Man · Oil on canvas · 60×60 cm – View the artwork
The question
You have a solid formal training after your studies at the Avni Institute, you nurtured your education at Visual Communication Design Holon. How do these experiences as well as your current travels around the world influence your evolution as an artist? And in particular, how does your substratum inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?
ARTiculAction Art Review – Josh Ryder & Barbara Scott
In Chen's words
The experiences I had throughout the world has enhanced the knowledge and technical tools I already acquired at Avni Institute and Holon institute of technology. There, the world of painting revealed itself to me with all its technics that can help me express myself. I got my inspiration from the world, from the people and the places, even from the spices in Morocco, their bright colors, all that gave me a lot of inspiration and I even painted with spices.
The architecture and the culture in many of the countries I have traveled to pushed me to explore more ways and directions in my paintings.
I believe the substratum is infinite, with the gathering of elements that forms an artwork, I let it out without protection. It is a quest of inner search that brings out the artwork through the substratum. With the search i crack kind of a mystical code in me.
From my spiritual travels in India, Mongolia, China, Thailand and more, I found myself exposed to a world of visual spiritual signs which connected me to my emotions and gut feelings.
I use the tools that I found and learned all over the world for the creation process, for example: I studied Numerology, Reiki, Jewelry, wood crafting and attended courses of enrichment for the internal world, all of these experiences help me express my creations and decide which material I pass on my feelings for the creation.
Chen Bachar
About the work
The Fisher Man shows an older man in a worn blue jacket leaning on the side of a boat, with a minaret and palm trees rising behind him. It is a portrait of a person and of a place at once, the meeting Chen describes between people, architecture and culture.
The answer also explains the range of the gallery: oil and acrylic paintings, charcoal drawings, digital art and crafts. Jewellery, woodwork and even spices are all materials Chen has learned to work with along the way.
More from the interview
- Chen Bachar Interview: Ten Questions from ARTiculAction Art Review
- Osnat and the Free Hand: Inside Chen Bachar's Creative Process
- African Woman: The Story Behind Chen Bachar's Oil Painting
- Gipsy: Painting a Woman's Quiet Power
- Thoughts: Between Realism and the Subconscious Line
- Childhood: A Rusty Tricycle as a Self-Portrait