Image of the Week: Chumash
© D. Yael Bernhard
Chumash is the image for January in my new calendar The Jewish Eye 5780 /2020 Calendar of Art. The title is the Hebrew name of the Torah, or Five Books of Moses, in the form of a printed and bound book. This is one of many quilt-like images I've painted, in this case incorporating textured paper rectangles – including one torn from a sheet of precious handmade watercolor paper that I bought at my local art supply store several years ago. Someone local had apparently made this paper and sold a batch to the store. I bought the entire batch.
I did several paintings in acrylic on this deliciously rustic, pebbly paper. But this time, I was itching to use oil paint. The only way to use oils on paper is to coat the paper with gesso first. So I gessoed a piece to the middle of the canvas. Other patches of different papers were similarly adhered in a few choice places. I let this textured surface dry for several weeks, having no idea what I would paint on it.
The image of the singular relationship between a reader and a Chumash began to take shape about a year ago. Ancient and intricate, with stories that still speak to us today, the Torah is a book like no other. No history book, it has had a powerful shaping effect on three thousand years of history. There is no end to the hidden meanings, the puzzles and paradoxes stitched into the text. The more you learn from the Torah, the more there is to learn. Among the ancient sayings of early (200 BCE - 200 CE) rabbinic literature known as Pirkei Avot, it is written: "Turn it (The Torah) and turn it over again, for everything is in it, and contemplate it, and wax grey and old over it, and stir not from it, for thou canst have no better rule than this."
Thus each person's relationship with this great work of spiritual literature is unique. I wanted to portray one such relationship. It came to me as an assemblage of teal and black enhanced with ebony. Divine spirit in the form of slanted light permeates a composition that resembles stained glass. Reader and book face each other, a handmade pair framed in that rectangular window of special handmade paper. A transmission takes place between individual and text – between profile and pages, between present and past – all woven together in a quilt of time.
I put over twenty sessions into this painting (typically 1-2 hours each) – a labor of love. I felt like I could have worked on it forever. Happily and gratefully, I sold the original just last week.
The Jewish new year begins on September 30th. I'll feature one more painting from my calendar before then. I invite you to view the entire calendar here. You can order it from my webstore here, or from Amazon here. Many of the original paintings are for sale; please contact me if you're interested.
Shana Tova U'Metukah – a good and sweet year! – to all my Jewish readers.
D Yael Bernhard