New Exhibition!!!  'Make Your life A Song'  at The Phoenix Cinema in East Finchley  25th Feb-1st April 2015I am delighted to have been invited back to the Phoenix Cinema  to exhibit some new work. I will be at the the Phoenix on Sunday 8th of March from 6-8pm. 

The inspiration for the title of this exhibition  
comes from a song by YANKELE ROTBLIT called ‘Play on The Strings Of Light’ ‘ 

"Make your life a song

Walk till the end of your road

The light within your heart

Makes your life a song"

  

'Dganit' - I wish you were here

This exhibition is dedicated to my friend Dganit. She had the strength to be happy in life, she was always straightforward and she relished challenging people’s opinions. Dganit used words that expressed exactly what she felt in her heart and even in the coldest, wettest & most miserable days England could throw at her, Dganit brought colour, vibrancy and her vivacious spirit to the streets of London.

Dganit helped me out of the cupboard so I could paint myself a picture and she always encouraged me to be true to myself and do what I love.

Dganit fought her illness with immense courage and dignity and as a nurse herself, she had great faith in the medical trials she was put on which helped to prolong her life and gave her hope. We all miss her dearly.

All the proceeds from this exhibition will go towards Cancer Research.

ORLY KATZ

‘Telling Stories’

I was born and raised on Kibbutz Gvar-­‐Am in the south of Israel. I was brought up in a Bet Yeladim, a children’s house, living separately from my parents and I had a wonderful childhood. I now live in London with my husband Paul and my two boys Yarden and Geffen.

Having worked as a kindergarten teacher since 1998, I decided last summer to take a year off from my work and concentrate on my painting. I am still unsure as to whether I will go back to teaching but I have always dreamed of becoming an artist and I am trying to make a go of it.

I have had two previous exhibitions. My first,‘Kibbutz’ in June 2011 was a joint exhibition with my friend Dganit Medina and was held at Chai Cancer Care in Hendon in aid of Macmillan Nurses and Chai. My second, ‘47/74’, took place in our back garden last summer on my Mums birthday. The title was an amalgamation of my own age and the age my Mum would have been on that day.

‘Telling Stories’, my new exhibition, is my (slightly late) offering for Hag Shavuot. It is an exhibition of oil paintings on many different materials, things I have found along the way. Each painting tells a little story in a simple and colourful way. Like children’s books, they each contain a simple feeling or message and I hope that they will touch people a little and make them smile. My kibbutz roots are woven within the stories I paint as are the people I love and care for. They are also inspired by my love of books, hand made objects, ethnography, the music of Chava Alberstein, Aviv Geffen, Idan Raichel and my 20 years of working with children as a kindergarten teacher. For me, each piece of work is like letting go of a butterfly which will find its flower, however fleeting that meeting might be. I hope you enjoy it and thank you for coming.

Orly

My Mums death four years ago made me start painting again and this afternoon was really for her. The name of this exhibition, 47/74, is the combination of my own age and the age my Mum would have been today, June 16 th 2012. It was a wonderful afternoon, we had over 100 visitors and most of the work was sold but it wasn’t really about that. I’d been to an exhibition in somebody’s garden in Cornwall last year which gave me the idea, thankfully the weather held
out because the forecast was terrible!. The sun shone and a good time was had by all.