Self-Reflections is a Curatorial Proposal Series exhibition which features two artists whose work is distinct in media, style and approach, and yet grows over a shared emotional and aesthetic terrain: Both artists find their starting point in figurative imagery with a strong emphasis on self-portraiture, and both approach the boundary between the real and the surreal, the seen and the imagined. This tension is a bold constitutional tenet in this pairing of artists.

Pesya Altman works in collage, painting, and drawing; often combined. She represents the elements which form her world – locations, sites and people that intrigue her; visual information collected from close observation, photography, drawing and note-taking. Her work maps a pictorial story about life’s journey, and it is, often literally, about a voyage – the need to move, explore and discover, to lose and find oneself. Pesya strives to combine realism and folk art with formalism and precision. Ideas are executed with varied textures, expressive lines, and vivid colors. Through her work, her world may be seen as an artifice, a construction of an artist’s reflections, where she herself often appears as a marker for a subject, a cut out doll in a landscape.

Gilead Tadmor’s work includes paintings, pastel drawings, etchings and papier-mâché sculptures and reliefs. Strictly figurative, his work integrates the real and the surreal through thematic twists, a pull towards the ironic and absurd and an urge to cross boundaries, both figurative and conceptual. Even the most realistic portrait seems to be touched by the fantastic through the bewildered expression of the subject, its setting or background, or use of color. As all portraits are fundamentally self-portraits, Gilead uses his work to explore himself, always cognizant that the only way to bear the gravity of it all is never to take it too seriously.

About the artists

Pesya Altman

Pesya Altman was born in Israel. She studied in Bezalel Art Academy and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Pesya lived most of her adult life in NYC and Chicago, where she taught art and drama, and in Brattleboro VT, where she raised goats and made maple syrup. Since July 2014 Pesya has lived and worked in Brookline, MA. When she is not in Brookline, she travels, draws and paints on a sailboat. Her art reflects the life of a wanderer. Her mixed-media works are fragments of life and dreams combined.

Gilead Tadmor

Gilead Tadmor was born, raised and educated in Israel. His formal education is in mathematics. He spent most of his academic career as a professor of engineering and mathematics in the US, predominantly in the Boston area. He received his education in art from his late father, Zvi Tadmor, a prominent Israeli artist and art teacher.