By Diana Bletter - August 24, 2022
If you’d expect Nirit Takele’s artist studio to be splashed and splattered with paints a la Jackson Pollack, think again.
The room is neat, dabs of colors on small pieces of paper hanging on the wall like Post-it notes, and stacks of acrylic paints lined up according to color like orderly vertical rainbows.
Takele, who says she’s 37 or 38 (“I have to check, after I reached 30, I sometimes get confused!” she said, smiling), is an Ethiopian-Israeli artist who does emotional, vivid paintings that make you want to keep looking at them.
During my visit, I noticed a woven basket typical to Ethiopia. She explained that she uses it to make injera, fermented Ethiopian bread, “if I have time, which is almost never.” It takes three days for injera to develop its special sourness, but when she eats it, she feels healthier.
The story of how she and her family came to Israel sounds like a fusion of folktale, grueling journey, and dream.
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