Multidisciplinary Artist

I stand and face the canvas with a vague perception and start applying paint. From that point the painting "guides" me through. Sometimes to the abstract, other times a figurative image creeps in as part of the complete painting.

Fortuity plays a large part in the process, but in hindsight a certain trend can be detected.

I can only imagine what the essence of the future paintings might be, and that’s based on past experience.

I ask questions and make assumptions. I get the answers through the process of painting, I am using oil colors, concrete, epoxy glue, et cetera.. sometimes the work grows to Three-D.

Aya Chowers

"In Between Worlds"
Dr. Sara Lotan

Observing Aya Chowers' works, one experiences different worlds of existence and being. At almost falling, survival and hope emerges. Skipping between the worlds is not possible; rather – penetrating into them, experiencing pain and scaring, change and evolvement. The observer can feel the falling and rising, a constant movement towards infinity.

The ambivalence that is typical to Aya's work finds a powerful expression in her figures, both male or female. Sometimes clear, sometimes implied, they are injured, groaning, sometime screaming – but never falling or collapsing. They hang on, lean on each other and rise through injury to upright position.

In addition to Aya's relationship with the human figure, she has a unique and very private dialogue with nature, particularly – the tree. "The tree for me is everything", she reveals in the only statement she makes about her creations. From very early works, such as "Strata", to the "Triptych", Aya's trees draw from roots deep in the ground, yielding multiple branches, splitting into complex worlds of time and space.The single tree, usually depicted with bare branches, sometimes multiplies into an overgrowth, a labyrinth where the observer has to find his way among a delicate mesh of brush strokes, which despite of its delicacy and brittleness, intensifies the more massive parts of the tree and its top.

This game of different shapes on very light background, both in Aya's scenery and figures works, forms an implied cross in many of her works. The traditional wooden cross does not play a part in Aye's work, neither in a religious meaning nor in death connotations. Rather, it gives the images of Between-the-Worlds a dimension of freedom, growth and even compassion.

Color, says Paul Klee, is quality: "color has Boundaries, scope, expansion, weight". The colour in Aya's work belongs to the healing domain. Most of the works in the exhibition are dominated by the color white, almost blinding, which might, in the observer Consciousness, imply a field covered with snow. But it is no soft landing. Islands of yellow, orange and red are never symmetrical appear to soften the landing, they bring with them a cure. If we add them to the tar drops, that under Aya's hand change from solid to flows, the burlap and plaster dressings and the restorative coarse thread nursing the bleeding scar, we seem to get the integrity of contradictions of the painful and comforting together.