Osnat Oliva.

Growing up I realized that creativity is the central quality of my life and that it is expressed in my way of thinking and looking at the world. I started my way in the art world with studies in visual communication, where I first became acquainted with terms such as composition, shape, and line.

After college I worked several years as a graphic designer, but I gradually felt unsatisfied and that I need to find a different path for my creativity. Quitting my job lead me to discover my real essence.

I was born to be a painter.

I was exposed to the magic of the world of painting through Israel Hershberg's Jerusalem Studio School. I remember the first day in the studio; easels standing in a circle around the model stage with canvases decorated with juicy paint spots. I was captured by the magic.  I studied there 6 years. During five of those summers I participated in the landscape program the school had in Italy, every year with a different guest artist. In those years I learned the language of painting, the language of abstract observation; spots and lines, tones and edges.

In those early years I painted and drew only from observation. I felt that nature has such a great variety of shaping, and that it was more than anything my imagination could provide. But I'm not satisfied with nature alone anymore. I am seeking for something beyond it - compositions that suggest something more abstract, more magical. In my recent works I'm combining several motifs into one composition, using nature’s language to create something new that isn’t objective realism. I'm drawn to complex compositions, full of shapes and movement, varying my painting language, and achieving a more textured and rich surface