Veins of gold connect and guide the viewer to a greater shared unconscious archetype of form. Like ancient ruins, these paintings are etched in grey granite with splashes of vibrant reddish earth lakes. My current body of paintings arises from these dreamlike paths, walking the shoreline of unconscious history. I began to dream of the shapes and colors of Caesarea. When I returned to my studio I found a transformation had taken place. The canvas functions as a meditative totem into my dream world. The act of painting is my aqueduct, physically and spiritually.

The problem I face today is re-discovering “unconscious” intuitive elements in my work. The problem in Caesarea was getting water to a fledgling city. On that overcast summer day, I left Caesarea feeling refreshed and inspired. Their hard edge circular forms contrasted with the lapping waves reminded me of my college thesis on automatic drawing.

They brought me back to my graduate school studies of 16th century alchemical etchings. The aqueduct’s stone arches had a surprising contemporary design. I contemplated the gravity of history, stone, and the circular nature of time. On an overcast day, I sat by the seaside meditating on the cracks in the rocks. It was my first trip there since childhood. Today much of the plaster is gone yet these tan stone arches stand tall, their feet tickled by the salty sea. This titan of ancient engineering unified rock and water giving life to a young city. Its massive blocks were roughly cut, cemented with grey lime mortar, and plastered with a layer of reddish lime plaster. And so King Herod commissioned a magnificent aqueduct. His work can be found in multiple public collections throughout the US including the Jewish Museum Milwaukee, WI Florence Griswold Museum, Lyme CT Longview Museum of Fine Art, Longview TX, and Saginaw Art Museum, Saginaw MI to name a few.Īn hour north of Tel Aviv, by the azure Mediterranean seashore, lie the ruins of an ancient city.Ĭaesarea Maritima, once the most important city in the Roman empire and the capital of Judaea, has become a crumbling stone monument between the blue Israeli coast and the dark brown desert.īuilt by Herod the Great in 10BC, this ancient city faced one of the greatest problems in history, a lack of fresh drinking water. Most recently, “The Great Americans” at Connecticut’s Florence Griswold Museum in 2019 where he also received a grant from the Connecticut Humanities Association. Throughout his 20+ years of painting and apprenticeship with art giants like Vito Acconci and Keith Meyerson he has been awarded many solo museum exhibitions. He graduated with an MFA from Brooklyn College. The end result are paintings that speak to an alchemy of geometry, a dynamic meditation of line, and a mastery of painting technique.Ībshalom Jac Lahav is an Iranian/Polish artist born in Jerusalem (Israel), currently living and working between Brooklyn, NY and Lyme, CT.

His simple golden lines harken back to his study of Kintsugi Pottery (or the Japanese art of repairing broken vessels with gold). Lahav’s layered canvases speak to the invisible quiet of reflection while his bold geometric mark-making reminds us of Gongshi (Chinese scholar stones used as traditional mediation tools). They serenade the viewer in a sublime song marrying the worlds of hue, value and line. The energy of the artist’s hand sings through these paintings as golden roadways. The layered painting is at times reminiscent of J.M.W Turners hazy landscapes while the compositions evoke the organic surrealist visions of Joan Miró. Outlined color segments remind the viewer of planetary movements and astrology. Complex layered sections with soft swaths of earth tones emerge through hand-drawn circles. These new works are a subtle homage to movement and balance, playing with various grays and earthy colors. Line, gesture, and hue combine to form a celebration of geometric earth tones in these intuitive acrylic paintings by artist Jac Lahav. NAVA Contemporary is pleased to present, Earthtone Alchemies, a new online exhibition of paintings by Absholom Jac Lahav.

San jac digital arts