The Artist and Her Art
Ziva's art is an expression of her genuine effort to bring joy and beauty into the world, and to celebrate the remarkable. She paints in a variety of mediums, and a variety of subjects, but her predilection is for the almost unimaginable in nature, and to create in watercolor on fibrous polypropylene plastic. Painting watercolor on plastic may seem unusual, and it is, but so is the magnificent life that Ziva breathes into her paintings.
Born in Israel, her inspiration often takes form from imprints of fondness and affection from her full life there. Curiously her passions found many creative expressions while living in Israel, both crafty and prosaic; it wasn't until she emigrated to Canada, though, that her expression turned to canvas and color.
With a love for children, with whom she worked her entire adult life, and for nature, it is not surprising that in conversation you will learn that each of her flowers in her mind's eye is imbued with the character of some of the flowers she has come to know in her human garden.
Almost by accident, and with no formal training, Ziva fell in love with painting, and in particular with watercolor. After sitting through a few classes a friend was taking, she had learned enough she thought to pick the right paper, and understood some of the basic principles, and she was off painting recklessly. She did not care what anyone thought of her paintings, she was mesmerized with the transparency, the play with dark and light, with infusing her painting from the tremendous variation in nature -- with infusing her paintings with life.
She has become a prolific artist; she paints every day, and while she still hopes some people will enjoy her work, she humbly busies herself with the process. It is the creating that draws her, to be able to start with a white canvas and to breathe life into it. She paints to paint.
A woman of strength and charisma, she is an artist, a mother of two, a grandmother of three, and a friend to many both young and old. You might not notice it at first in her paintings, but her life has not always seemed full, or happy, and certainly not always easy; if you pay attention you will notice the sort of flower that has her heart; it's the one struggling amongst the stones, on a thorny dry thin patch of nothing, rising elegantly and spreading its beautiful blossom for everyone to see.