The Expressive Sobriety of Lihie Talmor

It is not difficult to see in Lihie Talmor's work the expression of a sensitivity in its utmost development, that the artist knows how to communicate assertively, through an expressive language that reads with simple and discreet fluidity, between pauses and apparent wavering and a certain developed spontaneity, that brightens the observation of the work that suddenly becomes energetic and nervous, due to the sureness of a trace of power or impulsivity, in contrast with other serene and peaceful planes.

In this visual transit among what feels tense, soft, agitated, calm, abrupt, slow, Lihie Talmor's work transmits the hues of a wide variety of pleasant emotions that surely reflect those the artists must have felt during the process of creating and resolving her work with efforts, sometimes with difficulty, but at other times with inspiration or with fortunate intuitions that ease the work, which flows with ease and grace.

Lihie Talmor doesn't seem to want to tell us something (some transcendental message) through the stains and plains she paints. It is her marks and stains that speak for themselves. What we find or read in these works is not a message referring to something other than to themselves. It is the impression of seeing a painted work, or rather of feeling or imagining the actual painting of that work. Due to this the work results more immediate and so does the artist herself. The esthetic communication with Lihie Talmor's paintings leaves us with the pleasant flavor of a "sympathy", a warm and honest colloquial relation.

Her art is not subject to the outside world in the sense that it is not descriptive, representative, objective or extroverted, but neither is it introverted or into itself. It is an art that, as we have just said, searches for and proposes a sensitive dialogue with the observer; it attempts to establish a visual conversation with a warm, close human tone.

In Lihie Talmor's works, many things "happen", and are expressed with simplicity, the smallest possible amount of elements, effects, and efforts. With this exemplary "media economy", Lihie Talmor shows the efficiency of her work and of her technique in painting, which results all the more eloquent because it appears so simple.

Lihie Talmor distributes her stains of color into simple, almost geometric shapes that share the surface of the canvas without following any previous compositional sketch. In each painting, a stable and coherent structure can be felt as if it is responding to a preconceived system. But each painting turns out differently in the integration of its elements and its way of resolving itself. Each one gives us a different impression. The effects change and become independent of each other. However an absolute continuity is found in the works she had produced in the past several years. This unity appears to be a result of an organized constructive scheme on which all her work is based. But neither does the scheme exist nor there is some applied solution- there is no formula to correctly put together her paintings. Each one resolves itself in a manner that does not obey pre-established norms but those she invents as she goes along.

For Lihie Talmor the active painting is a conscious and voluntary activity that does not allow itself to be carried away by unconscious impulses. She doesn't reject these impulses, rather she takes advantage of them, and she controls and integrates them harmoniously into her work.

In order to preserve the rigorous sobriety of her work, the artist does discard anything that might appear to be adorning, showy, affected, or "precious". She also rejects the empathic and grandiloquent, and distrusts all virtuosity and tecnisism. In conclusion, the work of Lihie Talmor is very pure and severe, free of cosmetics and stridenties. It is simple, discrete, and serene, it shows us its nakedness to be more directly perceptible, more sensitive and conscious. Lihie Talmor is an artist who searches for and affirms freedom in her painting without the necessity to exalt or exhibit it.

Fascinated by the virtues of Lihie Talmor's paintings and etchings, it did not occur to me to search for the defects which I suppose they have. What matters and moves us are their expressiveness, their sincerity, and above all their beauty.

Perán Erminy

Presentation text from the catalog of the exhibition
"Remembrance of a Theme"
VW Gallery, Caracas
November 1988