Sara Novenson's Artist Statement
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The Invisible Hand Brings Me Full Circle.
Many times I have been asked to speak about my art, my inspiration. How does my
religion affect my art and my art affect my religion? At this point in my life the two are inseparable. This wasn't always the case. Spiritual I have always been, being born Jewish was not a choice. I fled from the “religious” upbringing and legacy handed down to me by my parents and ancestors. It wasn't until I married a Catholic Italian and moved to Germany in the 80’s that I became Jewish again.
To me painting has always been like prayer. Whether I’m painting the landscape,a flower, or one of my women of the Bible, I feel as though I am part of the earth, part of something much bigger than myself. It is a prayer of giving thanks, an expression of gratitude for the beauty of nature and all aspects of our life. As I paint outdoors, where I live in New Mexico, everything seems alive with spirit, the mountains, the trees, the rivers all have their own spirit and sense of being.. As I work I often think of the native Americans, they too believe that everything is infused with life. Whenever I’m in nature, or in my studio painting, I feel most connected to spirit. I believe that connection is what drove me into painting. I have to express my gratitude, It has to flow though me somehow.
While I was living in Germany something different began to flow through me. Something else that had to be expressed. It was love. The hidden love for my culture and ancestors emerged. I had to honor them somehow. How can I express the void left by a thriving culture that was once here and is now gone? I was haunted by this. Many strange coincidences and occurrences drove me to express these feelings through a body of work. Clearly an “invisible hand” was guiding me to fill this void. I began incorporating symbols from Jewish folk art into my work. This movement was practically wiped out with the Holocaust. Despite my Jewish upbringing and experience in America, I had never known it existed. The work was well received and extensively published on my return to New York. Over the years it has evolved and merged with my love of nature and the landscape. I created a series of landscapes framed by the beautiful Hebrew psalms, expressing thanks for the beauty of the earth which is what I feel as I paint. To make peace with my patriarchal upbringing I have created a series of Women of the Bible. I studied the stories of the women with a great female scholar, well versed in the Torah and the mysticism of the Jewish religion.
It has all come full circle. Living in Germany brought me back to my Jewish roots, to feeling what it is to be Jewish, to learning about my religion in an integrated spiritual way. And now the work itself is coming back to Germany. I feel it is a kind of healing. In a way it is filling a tiny drop of the void. There is a silent spiritual presence behind it, a knowingness and a reason for the work to have happened.