Look through Chen Bachar’s oil and acrylic paintings and one subject keeps returning: women. Some are named, some are known only by a single word, and each is painted differently. Painting women is one of the oldest themes in art, and it is easy to do carelessly. Chen approaches it as a question of balance.
This article looks at what he has said about the feminine in his work, and then walks through the women portraits in his catalogue. The featured image is his acrylic Red Woman.
Red Woman · Acrylic on canvas – View the artwork
People first
Asked about his main source of inspiration, Chen answered simply: “People fascinate me.” He spoke of the moments people go through, and of trying to understand the person before painting them.
That starting point matters when painting women. The question is not only how a woman looks, but who she is, what she carries and what she has lived through. In his descriptions of his own portraits, he keeps returning to strength, patience, nobility and life story, not only to beauty.
Masculine and feminine: a matter of balance
Chen compares painting to writing a piece of music, where every instrument carries some weight. In a painting, he says, there are sharp and strong parts that connect to a masculine energy, and tender, delicate parts that belong to the feminine side. He calls this his connection to his own feminine side.
For him, the balance between the two is the heart of the work, in the colours as well as in the lines, so that the painting carries an authentic feeling. Seen this way, his women portraits are not only pictures of women. They are also places where he looks for that balance in himself.
It's the same in painting, there are my extremists, sharp and strong parts, that connects to a very masculine energy, and tenderness, pleasant, delicate feminine side.
Chen Bachar, ARTiculAction Art Review
A tour of the portraits
African Woman (oil on canvas, 120×80). Chen has said he wanted to show a woman who is soft and gentle and at the same time noble and strong. He worked from a photograph that held his attention for days before he decided to paint her. Read the story of African Woman.
Gipsy (oil on canvas, 120×80). Here, in his words, the aim was to emphasise the power of the woman: her patience in the face of life and her feminine containment against her strength, expressed in body language, colour, line and shading. More in Gipsy and the power of a woman.
Mama Rachel (oil on canvas, 80×120). A large vertical oil portrait with its own article: Mama Rachel, from programmer to painter.
Thoughts (oil on canvas, 60×60). A small square painting that Chen describes as the beginning of a search for a line that speaks from the subconscious. He chose orange for creativity and vitality and purple for spirituality and a strong femininity. Read Thoughts: realism and the subconscious.
More women in the collection
Several other paintings belong to the same thread. Lolita (oil on canvas, 110×60) and Eve (oil on canvas, 80×60) are mid-sized oil works. Jessica (oil on canvas, 45×65) is a smaller, more intimate oil portrait.
Red Woman, the image at the top of this article, is an acrylic on canvas. Its title puts colour first, which links it to something Chen has said about his methods: that he uses strong colours to express an inner shout or the optimism of childhood. Placed next to the oil portraits, it shows how the same subject changes with the medium.
Seen together, these works show a long and varied conversation with one subject, painted at different sizes, in different media and with different moods.
Looking with respect
Portraits of women have a complicated history in art, and viewers today rightly ask how a woman is seen in a painting and by whom. Chen’s own words give one answer: he speaks of strength, dignity, patience and inner life, and of looking for the feminine in himself rather than only in the model.
The best way to judge is to look slowly. Spend a few minutes with each portrait, notice where the painting is sharp and where it is soft, and ask what kind of person it suggests. Then decide for yourself.
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