Black – White – Ochre: Liora Kouris

In Liora Korris’s exhibition Black–White–Ochre, the figures depicted are drawn from the artist’s family photo album. The central, prominent, and dominant figure is Sarah Strauss, the grandmother of Micah, the artist’s husband. Sarah Strauss was among the founders of the moshav of Balfouria, where Korris has lived for thirty-five years. Strauss arrived in Eretz Israel alone as a pioneer, seeking to fulfill the Zionist dream. At first, the pioneers lived in the Children’s Village, from which they descended to establish the moshav of Balfouria in 1922.

Grandmother Strauss was chosen as a model because she was an admired, educated, impressive, hardworking, and fascinating woman whose life was difficult and challenging. An independent farmer, she established, cultivated, and maintained a farm, with all that this entailed. The constant struggle against natural disasters, diseases, and pests did not deter her. In addition, she taught agriculture at Mikveh Israel.

The Jezreel Valley, which in reality is green and flourishing, is presented in the works in black and white, emphasizing the hardship on the one hand and perseverance on the other. For this purpose, the artist chose recurring monochromatic images in shades of brown, ochre, black, and white in the Cornfield series. Working on brown paper and cardboard enabled her to introduce monochromaticism into the work and provided an intriguing background for brush drawings in black. The white skies depicted above cover the mountains rendered in black. Korris chose to paint the cornfields with black, withered leaves alongside black clods of earth resembling rocks and stones.

In her paintings, she incorporated birds that appear black and menacing. Korris first encountered these birds during a visit to Mount Zabal in Guatemala, where they rummaged through garbage and collected food among piles of refuse alongside miserable residents searching for leftover food and discarded objects. All this took place in surprising harmony, without the birds and people fearing one another. Yet the frightening black birds, known as zopilotes, were sometimes painted דווקא in white.

Korris’s exhibition explores the essence of painting, combining figurative imagery with abstract expression. Her painting is an artistic act, and the craft of art is the craft of producing beauty. In the paintings, harmony takes shape and rises onto the canvas through a combination that creates a new kind of aesthetic. The reality reflected in the canvases and the expressive boldness of the artistic act arouse interest and expose the viewer to a more complex aesthetic.

For Korris, painting is an act of searching and experimentation. Its complexity is expressed in her relationship to color, her sensitivity to the environment, and her ability to reflect a world through observation that is simultaneously external and internal. The impulse to create a new painting is the impulse to search, return to experimentation, and renew oneself. When Liora Korris paints, she embarks on a journey across a sea of questions. Her paintings balance the figurative and the free, and the line and the stain. They address form and color while also expressing the feelings they evoke. In her unique way, she examines a series of undeciphered codes. Her work invites the viewer to choose between the position of an observer on the sidelines and the possibility of taking part in the fascinating journey to which her works point the way.

Daniela Talmor

Editing: Dr. Amit Kama