Desert Jungle

Alison Drury of The Australian Embassy informs us that Australian-Israeli artist Riva Zohar opened an exhibition of her works at the Horace Richter Gallery from 18 January til 8 February.
Thanks Alison for passing on this write up.
Jungle Fever is an amazing exhibition by Artist and Designer Riva Zohar.
Riva has participated in 4 group exhibitions and will now have her first One woman show.
Riva's optimistic and distinct choice of colours and her spontaneous brushstrokes together with her own individual personality, create an expressive, glorious and colourful dream world.
Just looking at her paintings will bring a smile to your face and allow your thoughts to wander through a happier more optimistic world…
This devoted mother of three adds another dimension to her life through creating
with paints & canvas. Her favourite medium is oil paints.
Riva’s work is naive in the style of Henri Rousseau. But she has added her own brand of naivety to her paintings influenced by her wanderings around the world and especially influenced by her two homes, Melbourne, Australia & Tel Aviv, Israel.
The wandering Jew syndrome is often mentioned but we don’t realise how it affects our lives until we look backwards and console ourselves with the history we carry with us all the time as Jews
Riva was born to holocaust survivors Nuisa & Jerzyk Cukier who escaped the worst of the years of the 2nd world war.
They were only a tiny handful of their family who survived; they lost their respective parents, grandparents and numerous siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins.
They had a daughter Yona (Dove) who was killed by the Nazi's at the age of 9 months.
Their arrival to Israel after the war was a liberating chance to start their lives again, collect their shattered lives and rebuild a new family in the Young and newly founded State of Israel.
They were very successful and had 2 children and built up a thriving business, socially they were very successful, and managed to locate many other holocaust survivors who had also managed to escape the Horrors of Europe.
They bought up their children Riva & Uri as optimistic, happy and positive human beings yet aware of their heritage and the burden they carry of the history of their people that has been laid before them.
When the country they love so much was constantly under threat of war the young family felt they needed to again try in a less violent environment for their children's sake. As Jerzyk 's brother and family were living in Australia they decided to reunite their tiny family: In Melbourne ,Australia.
In their newly adopted country the family succeeded enormously, in every way.
Melbourne was a growing cosmopolitan city that invited 'foreigners' with open arms.
With this background Riva's childhood was a happy, friendly and wonderful environment to grow up and develop in any way she wanted.
When Riva was twelve years old, her art teacher in Melbourne, Australia advised her parents to take her out of a regular school and put her in a professional art school, as she had a gift of translating onto canvas, what others put into words.
Her parents advised her to first study something practical and then paint.
Rivas parents having gone through such terrors during the war were not lucky enough to live and see their children grow and mature and meet and enjoy their grandchildren.
Life plays many tricks on us all and the legacy they left Riva & Uri, is not WHAT you go through but HOW you go through it all.
Riva studied Town and regional Planning (Melbourne University Australia) and then acquired her Secondary Teachers certificate –Mathematics and Physics (Melbourne Teachers College, Australia.)
But the Canvas was calling out and so Riva started painting with a prominent Teacher Jacque Weingrow.
Riva Married and had 2 children Rena & Talia,.She always had a great respect both for her adopted country and for her country of birth and history and the 2 places always intertwined entwined and interacted with one another, till this day.
After a very difficult divorce, & with the optimism that her parents imbued in her,
Riva took a very serious step & together with her daughters left for Israel.
In a new life in Israel Riva remarried and with her new Diplomat husband and 2 daughters left for a new adventure, living in Holland, where her son Allon was born, Washington DC (where she studied Interior Design at Montgomery college)& Ottawa Canada ( where she continued her studies at Algonquin College).
Throughout these years her passion & love of painting only grew.
Back in Israel, her great love, Riva finally bought out those final cravings and with the studio of Miquel Tomar, Riva developed her own style.
Today Riva divides her time between Tel Aviv, with her children & grandchildren & Melbourne where she has finally met her soul mate, the ideal connection between painting and her two homes.