10 Questions with Bat Chen Sneir

Bat-Chen Aya Sneir, born in 1963 in Israel, lives and works in Katzir, Israel. She received a BA in Science and philosophy with an emphasis on evolution, environment, and ecology studies from Haifa University and Tel Aviv University, Israel (1985-1988).

Graduated from Kalisher School of Arts, Tel Aviv, Israel (1990-1993), over the years, she engaged in teaching art to the gifted and initiated interdisciplinary study programs for youth and adults in various educational institutions.

Her paintings deal with the observation of nature and the human culture's encounter with nature. Ancient trees, ruins, the natural and public space, and the meeting between them. What remains after man has abandoned and forgotten the landscape and the life that is created after. In her works, she strives to reproduce the traces and sounds of the experience of being in those places.

In the last two years, Bat Chen has been composing collages of paper with painting on wood that document corners and architectural encounters in different places in Israel and around the world, for example, Umm al Fahm, Antalya, ruins in the Far East and sheikhs' houses throughout the country as representing a multicultural place, with a history of thousands of years.

www.batchenart.com

ARTIST STATEMENT

Bat Chen's pictorial compositions examine the relationship between nature and culture and their traces on each other, inviting the viewer to delve deeper and discover modes of observation. In her paintings, there are ancient trees, desolate landscapes, ruins, and houses that turned the desolation into a sight. The painting tries to describe what cannot be defined and deciphered towards an open and unlabeled space where even the concrete is broken down into its smallest particles and still continues to exist in a special way. For the artist, the painting is a tool through which you meet the world that is always in a state of attention and observation, part of the silent space between language and reality. Over the years, Bat Chen has developed painting techniques characterized by fine layering in a unique way on plywood boards on which she paints with oil colors, pencils, and pens with a varnish finish that fixes the pigment to the wood. She combines abstract and concrete painting, following her long research in the history of painting and the development of modern thinking, and their resonance appears in the details and wholeness of her work.

INTERVIEW

First of all, introduce yourself to our public. Who are you, and how would you describe yourself as a person and an artist?

My name is Bat-Chen Aya Sneir: A woman, Israeli, and a multicultural artist and painter.

You have a BA in Science and Philosophy, emphasizing evolution, environment, and ecology studies. When did you first realize you wanted to be an artist?

As a child, I played piano, sang, drew, and wrote. My hands "knew," and my voice expressed itself outward. Later on, I began scuba diving in the Mediterranean Sea and in the Red Sea. I connected very strongly with nature and went on to study natural sciences, abandoning the arts. When I graduated with my bachelor's degree in philosophy and the sciences, I realized that my need for creativity overpowered all and that my passion and endless curiosity, combined with the need to find ways of expression, became my first priority. I wanted to express my feelings and thoughts and articulate the things that occupied me. I devoted myself to studying painting and sculpture at the "Kalisher Superior Painting School & Sculpture" in Tel-Aviv. After four years, I set out on the artist's path, which I continue to walk to this day. I am still excited by the artistic investigation process and the desire to portray the landscape, following the special connections that I find. This process is fascinating to me.

How much does your background in Science influence your current work? And how?

As I mentioned before, the need for creativity replaced my academic life. I continue to be curious, always asking questions, and wanting to know how things work and why. I will not always find or receive the answer until I emerge myself in the creative process. In fact, I portray environments, landscapes, and places that can be explained geologically, geomorphologically, climatically, and in a broad context, but I am interested in describing all of these through my paintings. I have the option of not knowing and understanding everything I do, allowing the unknown, mystery, and magic to become a creative energy, a special atmosphere that I am looking for again and again that can exist in life and creation.

What are the main themes behind your work? And what does your art aim to say to the viewers?

My works are encoded in several layers and meanings; I want to describe nature, find tangles and try to decipher them, look for the rhythm within and explore the mergence between nature and culture. We are creatures who are born with feelings and become human beings walking on two feet, formulating our lives with words that are symbols, using abstract ideas that describe our reality and our thoughts. Through my own process, I enable the viewer to disassemble and reassemble the images in his mind's eye, see the whole and its parts, notice connections, grasp the obvious, and look for the hidden. Sometimes, just to gaze and feel it, and maybe even understand that there is something greater than what our senses can perceive and our intellect absorb.
My work is a platform to observe what my eye is exposed to, through the connection between the visuals and the technique, as reflected in the layers of the paintings. Art makes it possible for me to give expression to the feelings that the subject evokes in me, to the desire to draw and cover the surface and to create endless lines that I can follow. My art talks about the transitions that are created and their place in our lives, and what is my place and my identity. 

Let's talk about your creative process. Could you walk us through the whole process, from conception to the final realization? 

I am driven by inner intuition. I am constantly looking for structures in space, symmetry and asymmetry, textures that I respond to, and rhythms that excite and guide me. I wander a lot in the mountain areas where I live, where Jews and Arabs co-exist. I feel at home when I'm there. Wherever I wander, I take pictures. In my studio, I print the images, take them apart and put them together, sometimes changing the proportions of the subject and of what I want to express. Here begins a journey that I don't know the outcome of. The DOING becomes BEING. The creative process will dictate the road. The painting takes on a life of its own until I no longer need to touch it. After I begin to paint, I become engrossed in the process. The placement of the subject, the layers that are created, the directions, the rhythm, the tension, the colors & shades, the light and the shadow, all these and more become the body of the work. I paint on wood so I can put endless layers on it and use both oil paints and pencils. The plywood absorbs everything and contains every action I perform on it. 
Recently I have begun to work also with cardboard, discovering the differences in textures and reactions to the mediums I normally use, opening a new avenue for me to explore. 

In your work, you primarily depict natural elements, particularly trees, focusing on the intersection and mutual influence that art and culture have on each other. How did you come up with this idea?

This is an interesting question; it started in a psychology class I took at the university as part of my arts education studies. We had to bring a picture that represented us, and I brought a photo of a jungle: there was mystery, secrecy, the unknown, magic & fear. At that time, I didn't interpret the picture, but I wanted to paint it. The result was impressive: a picture consisting of 24 parts of lines, light, and shadows, which I painted with oil paints and pencils on plywood. The photo was of a banyan tree. A special tropical tree that originates in the Far East and Africa, it sends out aerial roots that, in time, return to the ground and grow more trunks and branches - sometimes over entire kilometers. From a single tree, a kind of a place is created, resembling a maze, which you can sit in, moor a boat in and it is full of life. This special tree, which has no hierarchy, has countless components that exist in perfect balance and this attracted my attention. I began to research the Banyan tree, and I discovered that in the east, there are ancient temples that were neglected and abandoned, and the Banyan forests engulfed them. The connection between the soft shapes and curved lines of the trees and human structures were perfect for me. The more ancient and dilapidated it makes the picture more interesting. The original structure is now a ruin, and space is created for something else with countless new lines and a different perspective. I painted a lot of banyan trees and later started to paint also acacia trees, pistachio trees, oaks, olive, and ash trees. This artistic move was synchronized with the publication of an article by Deleuze and Guattari "A Thousand Planes" about "Rhizome". The botanical rhizome is a network of underground roots that store nourishment and reproduction. The post-structural philosophy uses Rhizome as a depiction of the concept of a non-linear way of thinking that expresses randomness and disorder. The rhizomatic thinking is opposite to that of the "tree" with roots all the way to the top, which signifies causality and logic, order and authority. The rhizome, on the other hand, expresses a state of creativity and spontaneity and is an alternative thinking model to the rational one in Western culture. It is a metaphor for the flat plane that has neither a beginning nor an end, like the painting that takes place in two dimensions and on the surface. In my experience, this is a process that has no limits to the questions it raises within and to the triggers it produces towards endless creativity.

Where do you get your inspiration from? Do you depict landscapes you have visited or you are familiar with? Or do you prefer to work on imaginary or fictional landscapes and subjects?

I get inspiration from wandering and trips all over the world. I take pictures everywhere and collect images that catch my attention. As we know, memory is very deceptive, and sometimes, an experience that can hardly be described in words is embodied in an image, broken down into grids, and then a drawing put together into a picture that tells a story.
In addition to painting places I've been to, I started playing with the different images and putting them together into landscapes that do not exist in reality, adding a collage to the composition of the painting.

You already have a long career and have been teaching art. What is one piece of advice you would give to an emerging artist?

Go with your passion. Do what comes to your mind, and only after you put it into practice and in the material you can judge it. Time is material and a significant element in the creative process. Hesitation and doubts are our enemies. The creative process requires being in an endless internal dialogue, and the goal is the pleasure of being. I suggest seeing the work as a journey accompanied by feelings, thoughts, emotions, and questions. Dive and dwell in all these elements.

Is there anything else you would like to experiment with? Any new technique or medium, or anything new in terms of promotion you would like to implement into your practice?

I constantly experiment with different ideas and materials, so I experience a dynamic learning curve all the time. Different times of the year bring different feelings influencing creative energy, and this is reflected in my works. I am constantly challenged, looking for the correct and authentic way for me to paint, to cover the surface. I continually look for directions of development in addition to visuals and always try to find the sounds that exist in each piece. 
To me, each work is an ecosystem struggling to achieve equilibrium and a complete and balanced environment. Something our world views differently from place to place. Through my painting, this is something I want to share with viewers in galleries all over the world, to share an artistic dialogue, to show that the old and tangled view can become a balanced, beautiful, and colorful world.

And lastly, what are you working on right now? Anything exciting you would like to tell our readers?

I am working on a large painting that consists of an oak forest in Israel, a forest in the high Italian Pyrenees where a friend of mine lives close to and an ancient church in Italy that I visited. I am currently turning these elements into one whole, a place that is a non-place, an imagined place. In the creative process, I break down the big picture into parts, draw each part separately, and towards the end of the work, I will connect them all and complete the picture on plywood with oil paints and pencils. I'm curious to see how the painting will develop and what all this will express at the end of the process. I am deeply focused on laying down the lines that will create the layers. I am dismantling the building into two structures that float in the air, resembling a pedestal flying in space. Sometimes a thought crosses my mind - about these floating parts among the trees, the sacredness that I am giving a new form, what is the subject and what is the object? What is the main thing? How do all these connect and become one system? And finally, how does the political and socio-economic reality, of which I am a part in Israel and the world, affect my creative choices?