By Ilana Gal

“With an open countenance,” Ilana Gal presents us with a gaze that looks out from her images. Her work process involving the application of patches of color one beside another, builds the narrative through the material, so that the painting moves across the canvas as an embodied, living image. The images in her work evoke a collective recollection identified with tribal African ritual and tradition. The animals and masks constitute a representation of the carnal and hidden forces that operate in the world, forces that support existence and form the narrative of her paintings. These forces enable us as viewers to be part of the story even though we are embedded in the modern everyday. Gal’s childhood landscape and the ancient visual symbol dictionary from her childhood years in Africa with her family coalesce into a personal creative process and her unique language as an artist. Born in Israel in 1968, Gal lives and creates in Moshav Givat Nili. She studied graphic design at Yezreel Valley College, and since 2002 has been exhibiting her work in a variety of exhibitions in Israel and around the world.