ef4art

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Exploring the fusion of creation and destruction, "Blowing Up Their Cover Stories" 💥 is a modular triptych featuring a hand grenade, pomegranate, and pineapple. The artwork highlights the surprising visual and linguistic connections between these objects, from an exploding pineapple to a bruised pomegranate. The integration of 2D and 3D elements, including a WWII Mk 2 "Pineapple" grenade replica, breaks traditional painting boundaries. This piece unveils hidden truths, capturing the evolution of ideas from sketch to final form, and challenges the balance between beauty and violence. 

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“Pietà of the Lost” 🎗️is a 5.6-foot floor-standing, three-dimensional hybrid sculptural painting that I made last year. I usually don’t revisit older artworks, but I wasn’t happy with this so I continued to work on it. This updated version has also taken on added meaning since last year. I dedicate it to the hostages, their families, the missing and the empty spaces left behind.

Inspired by Michelangelo’s Pietà, this piece differs from the original by depicting the seated grieving woman with empty hands, holding no body. Symbolizing the missing, the lost, and the never forgotten, conveying a profound sense of loss and emptiness the loss of the physical presence of loved ones and the longing for their return.

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“Blow Over and Over” is a part of a series exploring the surprising connection between hand grenades and pomegranates. The term “hand grenade” derives from the French “pomme grenade” (apple with seeds), highlighting the coexistence of beauty and destruction. The resemblance of the pomegranate inspired the naming of the weapon in many languages.

This artwork embraces imperfection and impermanence, showcasing the beauty found in its evolving state. Moments of creation and the transition from 2D to 3D (and vice versa) are captured in this diptych. It features pomegranates with seeds bursting forth like sparks from a detonation in progress. At the bottom of the canvas, a 3D toy hand grenade, the culprit and inspiration, is caught between branches. Its safety pin is held precariously by a twig, hinting at the tension and fragility of the scene.

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Highlights from my solo exhibition'REVELATIONS’ at the Patchogue Arts Council • MoCA L.I. Museum of Contemporary Art Satellite 📡 Gallery. May 28 - August 31, 2024

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"Blown Away by a Namesake"

Another painting in the series on hand grenades, in this one exploring the surprising link to pomegranates. Did you know that hand 'grenade' comes from 'pomme grenade,' meaning 'apple with seeds' in French. In many languages, both the fruit and the weapon bear the same name. This and the other dualities in the painting invites reflection on the potential for beauty and destruction to coexist ➡️

[ef4art]

New series in progress! Exploring the duality of the hand grenade: weapon & fruit.

The first one is inspired by the World War II Mk 2 , the "Pineapple" grenade. The painting showcases dual narratives and a collision of creation and destruction. A blown up image of an intact whole pineapple and a blown apart fragment one.

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️ "Searching for Peace of Mind" - This new piece explores the dichotomy of hope and conflict through a split canvas, featuring a dove, raven entangled in olive branches. 36x36xx5.5 inches.

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Temporary title “WAR GAMES". Suggestions welcome! Other titles I was considering are "Toy Soldiers", "Not Child's Play", “Soldier On", “Maneuvers".

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“THORNY ISSUES” - A multi-dimensional painting exploring dualities, ambiguities, transformations, and the fears and threats of the unknown - real or imagined. 

30 x 55 x 2.5 inches

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“MEMORIES OF A FAR AWAY LAND”. Snippets and layers of my memory of a landscape. Just like their recollection in my mind’s eye the memories are in fragments both metaphorically and physically. 36 x 36 x 4 in.

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"Reflections" presents the front and back of a canvas joined together, allowing both sides to be viewed simultaneously. Inviting viewers to play an active role, drawing on their own experiences and imaginations to weave a personal narrative from the elements.On the front canvas, thick impasto paint creates an illusion of spilled milk surrounding a painted baby bottle nipple. A subtle reflection hints at a baby's face on the surface. The back of the canvas reveals the raw canvas and exposed stretcher bars. Here, a 3D baby bottle stands slightly tipped with droplets of spilling milk. Behind it is a suggestive image of a baby's face. This image appears as if it seeped through the canvas from the front.With each viewer acting as the interpreter, "Reflections" invites personal reflection and the creation of unique stories.

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“Man-Handled” - The interpertation really depends on your attitude, beliefs and experiences…

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CRY OVER SPILLED MILK

More on the complexities of the human experience amidst times of upheaval, war and terror.

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New paintings. They bear my pain and horror and that of so many others. Art is not always pretty or easy. I show them knowing they are difficult.

Paintings that were triggered by the images of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks on Israel.

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More paintings that were triggered by the images of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks on Israel.

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“Things are not what they seem”.

7 paintings (a sub-series to “Kidnapped”). Now the art belongs to you, I can only control the titles. Acrylic on Yupo paper.