On this Tu b'Av (the Jewish Day of Love), foreshadowing the lunar eclipse, the rising artist, Keshet Leah Abulof (KLA), kindly agreed to make a special contribution to Sapienism.
Editorial exordium:
On this Tu b'Av (the Jewish Day of Love), foreshadowing the lunar eclipse, the rising artist, Keshet Leah Abulof (KLA), kindly agreed to make a special contribution to Sapienism. Compared by some to Vermeer, by others to Pieter Bruegel the Elder, KLA notoriously defies typical themes and genres, peregrinating portraits, still life, and landscapes, with discrete interweaving of historical and religious threads. Her drawings, haunting and absorbing, traverse common styles, mainly realism, surrealism and impressionism, to open new vistas onto unparallel beauty, always crowned with witty words – titles that not only imply the paintings’ implicit message, but transcend their perceptual impact onto the dreamscapes of seemingly forlorn unicorns. This celebratory drawing is no exception. Was the painted page the Site of Love, or is Love itself a Site to be visited by us, or maybe still the painted dwelling of the lovers? Was it the First Site of the preceding drafts, or first among places where Love can blossom? Surely familiar with Toni Morrison’s “The Site of Memory,” was KLA urging us to see the truth behind, and beyond, the facts, while commenting on this troubled age of post-truth? With these spiraling questions in mind, we received KLA’s unprecedented willingness to answer a single question, and with great reverence asked her about the enigmatic title, to which KLA, ever so pensively, replied: “I thought that’s how you spell sight!”
