Hadara Rotem

Hadara Rotem's principal teacher is the Israeli landscape, where sunlight shines with full force on encounters between field and sky, mountain and sky, high-rise buildings and sky or sea. All are perceived as confrontations between fundamental powers of nature.
With every cell of her body, Rotem breathes the physical and spiritual landscape around her. And as an Israeli deeply committed to the most personal sensations that views of her native country arouse in her, she blends the two dimensions – the physical and the spiritual – in her works.
The beauty and the warmth of the country are transmitted in her art works, whether from a bird's eye view or as a visual panorama. All reflects the realization of the new Zionist dream formulated as early as the 1920's – the conquest of nature through work as a supreme value, building a nation of concrete while also continuing to work the land, as Nathan Alterman expressed in his Morning Songs:
"From the slopes of Lebanon to the Dead Sea
We will plow through your fields,
Plant, farm, and build for you
So that you will be beautiful

We will dress you in a gown of concrete and cement
And lay for you a carpeting of gardens.
On the soil of your majestic fields
The Harvest shall chime your bells."(1)

The Israel landscape makes a deep impression on Rotem and provides the starting point for her works. At times she paints at the actual location, and sometimes in a studio, drawing on details in aerial photographs taken at the site or images etched in her memory. The end result presents a flat space which, though unfamiliar as the landscape itself, still preserves the sense of place.
In as stylized tribute to artist Yosef Zartitsky, Rotem's paintbrush divides the canvas into a grid, creating an infrastructure of lines, forms, colors and splashes of color to comprise a patchwork of panoramas bearing order and rhythm.. The view results from a distant observation, as if looking at a bright and colorful carpet devoid of depth and perspective.(2) A closer look reveals hints of realistic forms: fields, water reservoirs, trees, buildings, railway lines, - all creating a new order in a landscape.
The very free interpretation of reality as an independent and almost abstract view of form and color is achieved in some of Rotem's works by computer processing (mainly of aerial photographs). This technical interpretation is an expression of her belief in the autonomy of the act of art, making her an artist with a pronounced modernistic approach, offering portrayals that make it difficult for the observer to absorb and decipher at first glance, and encouraging a longer inspection.
Semi-figurative images in Hadara Rotem's works are portrayed in a pale palate – off white, grey, shades of yellow, green and orange – in a link with the color scale of lyrical abstract art. There are multicolored areas and others bearing no more than dabs or spots of paint, with a sparse covering in the manner of water colors: thickly applied paint combined with a light wash, fine, meticulous brushwork here; heavy brush treatment of the canvas there. Sometimes the grid is delineated only on the outer layer, sometimes it reaches up from the depths of the canvas, almost buried beneath many layers of paint; sometimes it is so light as to be no more than a mere hint, sometimes heavily emphasized, even textured.
Alongside a network of parallel and diagonal lines, criss-crossing the canvas like the teeth of a comb, we find free, spontaneous sketching. This is Rotem's way of linking her canvas to the earth, revealing small or large processes of metamorphosis showing us plots of land creating an illusion of a barely discernible outburst, the boundaries of fields or an emphasis of color achieved by adhering strips of jute, by flashes of light or lines, all the components combining to indicate some activity beyond that which is immediately visible.
The views of Tel Aviv are a fitting example of the development of the new Zionist culture and a vibrant center of urban and commercial life, and in particular the depictions of agricultural areas in the Jezereel and Hula valleys, which were restored to their status as the country's granaries after spending centuries as swamp land. They cover Hadara Rotem's canvases from edge to edge, with no definable beginning or end. They are marked by the full force of their presence, replete, dense, bringing to mind the possibility of a place where time stands still, a place beyond time, as the eye strays back and forth from one side to the other with no specific focal point, engaged in extended active observation, slowly understanding the artist's interpretation of the subject.
Hadara Rotem's painting is an emotional reportage of give-and-take with reality. Her personal, private viewpoint delivers a message, combining a more or less clear compositional outline, further highlighted by geometric forms, with effects dependent on time, light, color or movement.
All of Rotem's work reveals the gradual development of researching her subject. Hence one may see variations on a single subject, or perhaps an attempt to portray the same subject a second time with the benefit of the time that has elapsed between the two versions. This allows the artist a more in-depth view, deeper analysis and precision throughout her works.
Locality is a sensory experience in the consciousness of the person living in that place, until she comes to identify it with her own identity, her very self. The location itself – views, light, warmth and color – becomes engraved at the most elemental level on that persons consciousness.
Hadara Rotem's locality is transferred through her paintbrush onto canvas depicting artistic depth and an inimitable truth. Every single one of her works shows us a fascinating aspect of the personality of an artist creating her art in Israel.