Rachel Gordin

Autonomous Artist

Excerpts from essay by Hagai Segev

The Choice of Autonomy
Gordin’s story is the choice of the autonomy embedded deep in her character. In the course of her life she has worked in circles only tangential to the centers of cultural and artistic endeavor in Israel, despite diligently keeping informed and staying up-to-date with local and international developments in the field of art. She has worked in art since her youth, both as teacher and as independent artist. However, the change of focus to full-scale work in sculpture and especially painting came at a relatively late stage in her career.
During 1960-1963 she studied at the Academy for Art Teachers, attended several supplementary courses on sculpture and painting in Ein Hod and at the Avni Institute. She went into teaching art at schools and in the framework of courses, mainly at the Municipal Cultural Center in Rehovot,where she lives.

Gordin’s works project modesty, humility and constant commitment to the creative endeavor. Therefore her work shows little of any connection to or traces of influence from a particular artist or artistic movement. Her entire oeuvre conveys a personal, intimate spirit that refers in abstraction to aspects of the times and to contemporary art.
Gordin’s works, especially the paintings, are abstract, with hints of the figurative. She has forged her path from within herself – an autonomous personality.

Gordin was born and raised in Moshav Bitsaron. Her bond to the land was implanted in her soul during those difficult years, and embedded even more deeply when she studied at the Mikveh Israel agricultural school. From that time to the present day, the color of the soil has been integral to her work. This bond prompted her to work in clay for many years, creating sculpture; to this day, decades later, the soil appears in her paintings on canvas. She prefers a personal interpretation regarding the nature of her bond to the land.

…..After battling cancer, Salli, Gordin’s husband, passed away in 1984. Rachel continued working and volunteered to teach arts in various frameworks. In 1987 she met Nachsholi Barak, also an artist and craftsman. The closer they grew, the more Rachel’s current of personal creativity surged.
At the beginning of their relationship Barak and Rachel were occupied with sculpture, but within a short while both changed direction and took up painting in an intensive fashion.
To this day, for almost twenty years, painting has been the centerpiece of their creative lives, from which outgrowths have sprung in countless, ever changing directions; it has been one great outburst of creative endeavor. Despite the personal connection between the two, each has maintained a personal unique stile.

Landscape as mood
Gordin’s tight and intimate bond to the land turns the images that appear on the canvas into universal images. As such, there is no need, in Gordin’s view, to locate them in specific and identifiable sites.
Gordin’s images are created solely in the artist’s thoughts and imagination, produced in a direct flow from her head to her hands, culminating in the outpouring on the canvas.
Gordin doesn’t place the canvas in an easel, but rather lays it on the ground and stands over it, pouring out and flowing with the paint from the container directly on the canvas.
Nevertheless, this free flow is planned and directed…. Rachel calls this method “painting that paints itself”, but the guiding presence of the artist is still very important.

The Colors are the Spirit
Many of Gordin’s works are painted in shades of brown, black and red eliciting a sense of darkness and gloom…. Part of the gloom stems from the effort to delve deep into human consciousness in an attempt to understand the essence of creative endeavor and art. This art doesn’t spring from mountains of joy, but rather reaches down into the depths of the earth, the depths of suffering. Universal human suffering is what drives the creative process.

Rachel’s cypress tree motive is linked to her memories of the moshav where she grew up.
In context of Jewish art, cypress trees will always be considered representation of death. Death indeed infuses many of her works.
Contending with death is a heroic struggle. When she was a child she was inculcated with the conviction that she must be strong. When Arabs began shooting (1936 – 1938), her parents told her to hide underneath the bed, while they went out to defend the settlement. Those anxious, lonely hours continue to find expression in her art. Her work adheres to the gloom and colors that symbolize valor and profound intensity, but introversion and durability as well.

Apocalyptic Tempest
An apocalyptic atmosphere pervades Rachel’s works…. She chooses to let her works speak for themselves. Creative art that avoids any external speech possesses great dignity.
These are the apocalyptic whirlpools of a turbulent mind, arranging colors and forms on surface of a medium in a current that passes through the body to the canvas. This amalgamation is the essence of her work. It expresses that which can’t be put into words.

Rorschach as a Solution
Out of the apocalyptic tempests the “Rorschach” works arise in a natural flow.
Gordin: “When I start painting, I never know what’s going to come out of it”. The Rorschach works are the most distinctive expression of working in the realm of the unknown. It’s a takeoff into celestial realms, an atmosphere of rootless levitation…. It isn’t that great distance, however, for the earth and the soil, like the celestial spheres, are cosmic elements that influence the universal human condition and all human experience.
Gordin prefers the natural flow of the forces of Nature and an expressivity that flows from the soul into action.
The process of reproducing the images via the juxtaposition of canvas to canvas and the transfer of paint from one medium to the other is like the process of human reproduction and birth. The result ostensibly is not calculated in advance. Clearly ,however, the choice of colors in the initial stage is calculated and planned…. Oftentimes Rachel repeats the entire procedure until the result is absolutely satifactory.

The duplication and mirror image – a sort of kaleidoscopic pattern – is a process whereby the artist agrees to being assimilated into the work without having any real presence there. Gordin downplays the presence of her own self out of respect for the powers of thought, which to the creative artist are the forces of Nature. They are stronger than and rule over the life of the artist. This is a persistent domination, like that of the land, of the tempest, and of the human spirit.