About Ofra Wolf
Ofra Wolf Born in 1953. Lives and works in Kibbutz Urim, Israel.
Art studies at the Avni School (1995-1996) and art instruction studies at the College of Visual Arts, Beer-Sheva (1999-2000).
Mainly practices oil painting on canvas from a small to a very large scale. Her works move on the axis between figurative and abstract.
Her creation is guided by narratives or images with an autobiographical and cultural-local context. There is an emphasis on life in the Negev, which includes pastoral landscapes on the one hand, and on the other, great political and social tension.
Her work is guided by the picturesque narrative while the language of the art changes according to
the subject. Each narrative stands on its own and also relates to previous narratives, with each story creating an artistic series that stands on its own.
In the attached body of works, there is a preoccupation with life in the shadow of the war during the 2014 Israel-Gaza Conflict in the Gaza Envelope area. The painting that is made between one alarm
siren and the next contains within it an emergency call regarding the political situation in the country out of a feeling of eradication of the current existence as it is. This is a series of paintings that
contain images from photographs of the bombings in Gaza alongside Egyptian coffins that symbolize death (alongside the artist's Egyptian origin) and more.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work is very serial. Throughout every time period I do a different series of works. The content and narrative of the works dictate my materials and the style of the work. I set up the subject of the series for myself after careful thought, but when I start the series, I work simultaneously on several formats and in a rational and intuitive way. In the creative process I am in constant research. It is usually formalistic research during narrative research. My painting style is mainly in the work of oil on canvas in medium to very large formats. My painting style is figurative-expressive, which sometimes combines more naive or morerealistic painting. I work in a very multilayered manner, with rapid paint applications alongside continuous painting with transparencies. My color palette is very muchrelated to the subject of the painting, but it can usually be said that my paintings are intensive and have an intense and rich color. The subjects that stimulate me are autobiographical, of myself and the reality around me. Therefore, they represent private and personal issues up to general social and political issues. In recent years, I have worked on a number of differentseries, mainly a series that describes dealing with the war in the shadow of living in the Gaza Envelope area. Another series deals with sexual abuse, harassment and sexual violence both in the kibbutzim and in general. Before that, I dealt with issues of childhood, memory and traumatic autobiographical experiences. In addition, in earlier works I dealt with representations of the kibbutz with its disintegrating homes as a symbol ofcollective inequality and internal social problems in the kibbutzim. Throughoutthe years, I have also painted the landscapesof the kibbutz and its natural surroundings. Nature often allows me to be the ground for casting my feelings and thoughts toward the environment in which I live and in which I create.