Oil or acrylic? Large canvas or small? Coffee, spices or sand? For Chen Bachar the choice of material is not technical. It depends on the message.
ARTiculAction Art Review asked what draws him to his materials, and whether he starts with a concept or finds it on the way. His oil painting Venice, printed in the same feature, shows one of those choices.
Venice · Oil on canvas · 45×35 cm – View the artwork
The question
We definitely love the way your craft production combines rigorous geometry with freedom of composition, summing up into a tactile concreteness the ideas: what about your choice of materials: what drew you to them? In particular, do you start work with a concept or does the idea come later?
ARTiculAction Art Review – Josh Ryder & Barbara Scott
In Chen's words
My choice of materials depends on the message I want to pass on. There are lots of materials at our disposal and it's important to be accurate, As important to be wild.
My attraction comes from a vision. I visualize what I want but don't go into details, feel like painting acrylic, feel like painting on a big canvas, I feel like I want to paint a half realistic half abstract painting. From there I start if I want a painting hotter I tend to choose oil paints, if something more modern or I catharsis of the moment, I will use watercolors, I could get cracking as soon as possible, and then I begin the journey.
Not many cases in which I began with abstract then I got to realistic painting. The concept is important, but I never know where it will take me, I took inspiration in my recent paintings from photographs and channeled them to my zone, my art.
There were paintings I painted with spices, coffee, sand, every material gives its energy and it is very important to be accurate, what's nice here is that no one can say or dictate to you what accurate for you. For example, there are paintings of three layers and 15, every painting and my "eagle" with it, sometimes I humanize my paintings in their demand towards how to paint them.
Chen Bachar
About the work
Venice is a small oil painting of a gondolier steering past yellow and terracotta façades, green shutters and flower boxes, with the light caught on the water. It is the “hotter” painting Chen describes, and oil was the material for it.
Painting from photographs, which he mentions here, is how many of his portraits begin, including African Woman.
More from the interview
- Chen Bachar Interview: Ten Questions from ARTiculAction Art Review
- Amy Winehouse: Between Speaking to the Audience and Staying Mysterious
- Mama Rachel and a Late Start: From Programmer to Painter
- The Fisher Man: How Travel Shaped Chen Bachar's Painting
- Osnat and the Free Hand: Inside Chen Bachar's Creative Process
- African Woman: The Story Behind Chen Bachar's Oil Painting