ABOUT AVI SHMUELI
Bio
Avi grew up in Israel, where his mother was a graphic designer and a successful children’s book illustrator. In the 1990s, he emigrated to the United States and spent years away from art, working in various software development roles, during which time he relocated to the Seattle area. There, he quickly discovered and fell in love with Orcas Island.
Several years ago he moved full-time to the island, where he picked up oil painting in earnest. Painting primarily landscapes in an impressionistic style, much of his work consists of rural scenes from the areas he explores on walks with his dog, Ranger.
Avi is a member of the Orcas Island Artworks cooperative. You can see some of his work in their gallery.
Artist Statement
I studied Comparative Literature and English Literature in college, and then Computer Science. I worked for years in programming, program and feature design, and then in data analytics.
I say all this to explain that I spent years critiquing or analyzing literature, art, human-machine interaction, financial and transactional data, and more. The analytical stance was the common element. And I am familiar with how different the analytical gaze is from the artistic. So I don't come to my art with a theory and I intentionally refrain from applying a conceptual schema or some paradigm to what I do when I hold a brush. It may be superstitious, but I try to guard my artistic act from my analytical eye.
Instead, what guides me is a commitment to sincerity in what I do. I try to make each new canvas a learning experience, a new way of looking at the world, a new way of seeing color, a new way of looking at nature and what fills it. A day will come when I know exactly what I see and how to say it, but I hope the road there is long, that my painting work never becomes rote and that I keep learning how to see things anew and that my art will keep showing that.
My typical workflow does not start with that brush. I usually come to the canvas well-prepared. I will use a camera to capture snapshots of subject matter, process them digitally for inspiration, sometimes editing them for composition. I then move to the canvas from the comfort of my studio. My work is in oil, mostly on canvas, occasionally on wood panels. While there is an amount of planning and preparation involved, the final painting is always a rewarding surprise.
Some of my projects will use AI. I do not use it to render my art, but in the same a way some artists would use a wooden manikin, to position a figure, or to set up scenes. In those cases, I prefer to use relatively primitive generative models. Their clumsiness and inability to render things realistically is well suited for my purpose.