Meet Rotem Amizur

Today we’re excited to be connecting with Rotem Amizur again. If you haven’t already, we suggest you check out our prior conversation with them here.

Rotem, we are so thrilled to be connecting again and can’t wait to hear about all the amazing things you have been up to. Before we jump into all of that, some of our readers might have missed our prior interview, so can you take a moment to reintroduce yourself?
It’s so nice to be here again, I appreciate the invitation! My name is Rotem Amizur, I am a painter. To briefly introduce myself, I can say that I work mainly in the medium of collage and above all what drives me is the love of shapes and colors and the endless games and possibilities that can happen between them. My collage is deeply rooted in the world around me but in the end, it is a play between reality and invention.

To be honest, I feel much has happened since I was last here! I am experiencing motherhood for the first time and parallel to that, my family and I have moved to New York 3 months ago. I was born and raised in NY (until the age of 12) so there is a feeling of familiarity but everything is new! We are still figuring out our new equilibrium – from our daily schedule to where is the best place to buy food. I have a deep feeling that this is where I am supposed to be now and I am looking forward to discovering what this place will bring. Since we arrived, I feel many gifts have come my way. Briefly after landing in NY, I took part in the Copyist Program at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This Program is the oldest program in the museum and it consists of 12 weekly sessions of painting in front of a chosen work in the Museum. Painters taking part in this program usually work with oil on canvas. I applied to work in collage. The curators gave me a green light and I was the first artist in the history of the Metropolitan to work with scissors and paper in the galleries. It was an honor and a profound experience for me. Each session, hundreds of people would pass by and see me working. My desire was to keep an imaginary bubble of concentration so that I could make the most of the time given to me but every few minutes I found myself having a short, but genuine interaction with a passerby. They would look at my collage – built out of a few big shapes – then at the 16th century painting by Titian that I chose to work in front of. Their eyes would go back to my collage and then again to the Titian hanging on the wall. They would smile and I would smile back. In this moment – past and present, old and new – everything would intertwine and it felt that something shifted in them – as if they were seeing Titian with new eyes. I deeply enjoyed this connectedness.

Copying and playing with the Old Masters is part of my joy and my practice. In January 2023, I put up a solo show at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art consisting of a series of 5 variations of 6×6 ft collages after the 15th century Italian Renaissance painter Andrea Mantenya. This was a series that started in the time of Covid in Israel. The apocalyptic, end of the world atmosphere around me, gave me the courage to make a jump in terms of the size I worked in. It was the first day of quarantine and I decided to work on a 6×6 ft collage thinking – “Even if no one will ever see this, I have to see it and I have to do it anyway.” A year and a half later, together with my friend, curator and visionary, Iddo Markus, the show opened at the Herzliya Museum. Parallel to the show I published my first Artist Book that is like a piece of art in itself and even presently I love flipping through its pages, remembering the endless editing, changes and transformations this book has gone through, until reaching its final harmony.

Great, so let’s jump into an update on what you have been up to since we last spoke. What can you share with us?
Yes, I certainly feel this journey is alive and taking me to understand new things about myself all the time! The big question for me is how to combine family life and art. Lately, I am starting to think that this may not be a question at all and that I simply have to have an honest intent in both fields and life will manifest itself. Probably better than I can imagine.
One thing I feel drawn to these days is giving collage workshops. There is something about a 4-5 day time frame where many magical things can happen. I have been teaching painting and collage since 2014. For 10 years, I gave weekly classes in “Haneviim” Art School, an independent art school in Haifa, Israel that 7 artists friends and I have founded and managed. I am not physically there now, since I am here in NY, but this school is running and providing a cultural home for so many people in the city. It’s truly a gem. Back to my transition from weekly classes to workshops – just before moving to New York I was invited by the Tel Aviv Museum of Art to give two In-person workshops. In those workshops I felt I was able to distill 10 years of teaching into a few hours. I built the workshop based on “games” with very simple principles. Many people that attended the workshop had never touched the medium of collage and came out of the workshop elevated, satisfied and felt that they truly learned something. The workshop mirrored for me the power of this kind of condensed experience – for me and for the students.

In October, about a month after arriving in the US, I gave a workshop at Blackpond Studio, near Rehoboth, MA with 10 participants. It was splendid. I am excited to share that this coming March, between the 13th-16th, I will be giving a 4 day In-person workshop at Kings Oaks, a beautiful landmark near Newtown, Pennsylvania. Geographically, it’s an hour and half drive from NY and there is also the option to take the train from the city. This workshop “Interior in Collage” will take place in a historic house on the grounds of Kings Oaks farm with windows facing a tranquil forest. Participants will paint paper to create their own color palette. We will then observe the interior space around us as a playground. Furniture and decor from different eras–chairs, sofas, lamps, paintings on the walls, and still-life scenes of objects and flowers will inspire us to compose intimate scenes embodying “place”. We will play with looking and inventing, turning the mundane into something thrilling. I am excited since it will be my first workshop celebrating the subject of the “Interior” and this historic house at Kings Oaks feels like the perfect setting to explore and play!

Alright, so let’s do something a bit more fast-paced and lighthearted. We call this our lightning round and we’ll ask you a few quick questions.

Favorite Band or Artist: Cezanne

Sweet or Savory: Sweet

French Fries or Onion Rings: French Fries

Favorite Cartoon growing up: Scooby Doo and The Magic School Bus

Favorite Childhood movie: Pocahontas

Was there a moment in your career that you can tell us about that illustrates or demonstrates the kind of person you are, your approach, ethos, etc.
Yes, the moment in my career that comes to mind is my approach to my solo show “The Flatlands” at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art that was exhibited between January – June 2023. For many years everything that had to do publicity automatically connected in my mind with a place of being afraid to shine too bright, the fear that people would not take it well and have negative thoughts about it. In the last few years I have gone through a transformation in this subject of giving and receiving. Simply put – one doesn’t exist without the other. The love and appreciation I received from so many people in the forms of email, phone calls, conversations and feedback, from children and from adults – all this nourishes me and stimulates a true yearning to be of service in the future. Many times it seems that we exhibit our work from a place that wants fame and recognition but I can honestly say that since these collages were not about me, and that I was just a medium throughout their making so that when they were displayed publicly and provided an enjoyable experience for so many people, I was in a place of service. That state of being gave me the opportunity to truly enjoy the whole experience and I am grateful for that. To end I would like to share a Matisse quote, that is in my mind while working and exhibiting – “What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject-matter . . . a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.”

Website: https://rotemamizur.com

Instagram: @rotemamizur

Facebook: Rotem Amizur Artist

Image Credits
Liron Ginsburg
Moshe Naftali
Yuval Hai
Itai Amizur
Marlena Skowronek
Dana Lev Levnat