levi benyamini painter


	I work in transparent layers using water color, chalk, and colored aquarelle pencils, whose obscure quality is most effective for my purpose. These different media generate a dialogue between patches and lines as well as between different layers, which are sometimes complementary and sometimes contrasting. The obscuring white layer does not block this dialogue, it only tones it down. The observers, I hope, might find that with its complex underlying dynamics, the work develops and matures as they look at it. I grew up in Tell Aviv, Israel. I started painting at an early age, but only through mastering the piano I discover that I can "see" the tones and other sounds as colorful patterns. I have later learnt of synesthesia, the phenomenon of transference between auditory and visual modalities. Music has always been "viewed" in my head through colors and forms. It eases abstract visual thinking. In spite of my attraction and involvement with art, my education advanced towards science studies. As a graduate student, while working on my Ph.D. in biology, I was employed as an illustrator for the department of botany at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I provided them with hundreds of precise drawings of flora using only an ink-pen. This was my first close experience of the natural correlation between form and function, which has always been at the background of my fascination with biology. After working as a zoologist for almost two decades, I have decided, at the age of 52, to devote myself to painting. I have thus retired from the Volcani Institute for Agricultural Research, where I was employed at the time, in order to focus myself on my artistic goals.