Aviv Keller

In 1990, The Israel Museum held a retrospective of the body of works by the Expressionist “Die Brücke” group, that was active in Dresden, Germany, during the turn of the 20th century. I, a boy of 15, was captivated by the boundless colorfulness and the sharp angles, the tools with which they broke the walls of the developing industrial world in favor of an escapist, hedonistic world. Sailing away in my imagination to a different life, a life that is carnal and harmonic between man and the nature that surrounds him.

The year is 2017 and I’m 42 years old, traveling for a week to a rural forest-filled landscape in eastern France, joining a community of Radical Faeries, an LGBT international movement that proposes an alternative culture, set in the heart of pastoral nature, advocating minimal use of modern technology while harvesting solar energy. Being the only painter in the group, I found myself creating an alternative culture of my own.

For a week, I stood at my post day after day, under a shed at a temperature of 10C degrees, while the heavens above me poured their showers, to paint, well, a bush.
Surrounding me, the very essence and embodiment of nature’s beautiful simplicity. Trees to the right of me, shrubbery to my left, the grass beneath me, and the skies above. I’m not stepping outside into the world to paint. I’m part of it.