The Element of Flow in the Paintings of Shoshana Lew


During a stay in Switzerland, I began to make paintings which seem to stream down the page or canvas, somewhat like an extravagant kind of weaving.
The images originated, I believe, from walks in the woods, with the many streams, streaming across the paths and down the ravines.

The woods, being natural,(in contrast with those in Israel which have in the main been planted in the last 70 years,) show the passing of time, the birth and death of plants and trees, the weathering, cracking and erosion of boulders and pebbles, the unbelievable sculpture of the roots, breaking through, shouldering aside whatsoever stands or lies in their way.
The first paintings were a frank reinterpretation of these excursions, never a documentation but more a sense of awareness of what was taking place.
The more recent works show an abstraction of that sense of flow, of everything in the landscape.