Noa Ironic
Noa Ironic . I grew up in Israel in an orthodox Jewish household, went to an all-girl orthodox school till I was 13. After my parents separated in 2001 my mother became nonreligions and so did I. a bit after I turned 13 I ended the relationship with my father and later on changed my family name, what at the age of 17 felt like a very liberating act.
I come from a complicated household, my father is Jewish Iraqi and my other is Ashkenazi, so they were two very different people, both from very traditional stubborn households.
My mother was a stained-glass artist and teacher, I grew up in her studio since school wasn’t my cup of tea at the time. She had to give up her dream to support since the divorce was so bad and complicated, I am forever grateful. I managed to avoid serving in the army miraculously, so at 20 I tried out for art school and started my studies at Shenkar college the next semester.
Before art school I painted and drew for years on a daily basis, but in the first two years of my degree I tried to find myself in other mediums and it wasn’t a good fit.
I graduated from art school In 2019, before the pandemic struck thank god. Ever since I have been working and exhibiting my practice nationally and internationally.
Noa Ironic Interview
1. Hi Noa, tell us about your background. How and when did you first start to paint?
Hi back! So I come from a pretty colorful background, I was born and raised in a religious Jewish household in Israel. My mom was always my biggest fan - she always encouraged me to create and do art\music. I have drawn and painted by myself since I was 3 but only started actually getting serious around 20.
Back then I used to live in a small beach town in the south, there wasn't much to do but smoke weed and chill honestly, so I started watching painting tutorials and trying my luck out with oil paints - and the rest is history lol. At 21 I went to art school which really helped me with the thinking side of creating art and not just painting portraits of celebrities. At this point, 3 years after graduating, I'm still learning and experimenting, discovering the medium and myself.
2. What is your process like? How do you begin to work?
My process is not overly complicated. Whenever I have an idea for a painting I start by doing a rough few sketches just to be able to visualize it, later I start image searching to get a better grasp of a believable image. I usually end up with a final sketch that I'm happy with after 4-5 tries, which is nice, plus I love drawing so I enjoy myself. From that final drawing in my sketchbook I copy a bigger version onto regular A4 print paper (my books are 180 gram A5 paper) so it's clearer for me to understand what I'm doing.
Since preparing my materials is just as important as painting, I stretch raw canvas onto my desired frames, do 3 coats of gesso and sand them down to be silky smooth. the better the canvas is prepared - the better the painting will be, in terms of the reception of the paint in both body and tone.
From the final copy of the sketch I eyeball transfer and enlarge the image onto my canvas, in each transition of the drawing there are ‘fuck ups’ which I find contribute to the images flow and language.
I know I spoke only of my physical process and not the mental one, but I find that just the constant loop of drawing, stretching, prepping and painting manifests my next ideas. All though I must say that a lot of my ideas come from day-drinking with one of my favorite painters and people, Izabella Volovnik, we just come up with the dumbest funniest ideas, while yelling at pigeons, but every so often we get a good one. Also memes.
3. What is the story behind your paintings? As you mentioned, you focus on human nature, ego and masculine struggle with the element of daily life, horses, horse riders, and cups. How are these forms interconnected to the subject matter?
First of all, I'm a huge advocate of storytelling, every painting and every character in it has a rich backstory in my mind. Usually they are just average joes trying to live their best life, not always knowing that their best life comes at someone else's expense.
I born and raised Israeli, which is a complex matter of its own. I'm not going to talk politics, that's a talk for a different day. Israel and the middle east in general is very warm and in your face kind of cultural phenomenon, people will just randomly say what they think to you in the street and you just got to take it. I used to hate that, but I'm still not into it. Just imagine getting comments about your body from random on the street on a daily basis, annoying! But since I started confronting in a calm manner, these humans, mostly male, I came to learn they see this as valid or “just their opinion” that had to be heard. I grew to understand this oversharing attitude is based on the macho military society I live in. Naturally it became part of my practice, though I started to understand and rarely empathize with these guys, they truly just want to communicate but don't know how.
The horses and jockeys period started in school. I found a ton of amazing horse races and was fascinated by the majestic muscular tragedy, so many colors and angles. It became an obsession, drawing and painting these images religiously till it became a language I could speak. My professor told me one day that the horse is an image were so used to seeing in paintings that it vanishes within our gaze. The horse truly is a pillar of painting since the dawn of man on caves, through kings and noble men and depictions of war, what better way to talk about gender, money, class, power, sex could I have found? Now it's just clay in my hands I play with, to tell my next silly story of absurd failure in.
4. What artists, books and movies inspired you?
Ok, so this list can go on forever so I’ll just do a top 2 of each:
books – ‘Kafka on the Beach’ by Haruki Murakami and a ‘Horse Walked into a Bar’ by Itzhak Bashevis Zinger.
movies – ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘The Holy Mountain’, yes I’m a complex person.
artists - hard to choose two but I’m going to say Otto Dix and Picasso, but seriously there are so many contemporary artists I drool over, I’m just not going to tell you whom *wink*
5. How has the city you live and work in influenced you and the art you create?
My work used to only be jockeys and horses, imagery that was very foreign to Israel, but I managed to use it to make my point in a more global sense. In the summer of 2021 I did a short residency in London, where I created a work that was local at its essence. I wanted to bring the unique alien observer experience to the exhibition and so I did. I soaked up my surrounding and mixed it with my terrible knowledge of British culture (which is ex on the beach and Jordy shore) to synthesize an installation piece I was happy with.
On my return to Tel Aviv I felt I needed to bring this locality into my work also at home, which is tricky, because I have a weird sense of shame about where I’m from, I come from a place of such pain and conflict that cancels out everything else, I felt that if I dare bring it into my work I’d be shun.
Overall I'm glad I tried and still try to bring my surroundings (the everyday domestic urban kind) into my practice now, hopefully it may raise some awareness of mine and others' unique existence within a bizarre and painful setting. In my latest solo exhibition at Rosenfeld Gallery in Tel Aviv I explored Israeli masculinity and its complexities. Coming from a very macho culture that is also religious and very conservative whilst trying to navigate current day male expectations is so hard! On one hand being told to be tough and strong, on the other being told to be loving and vulnerable, but not too vulnerable because then you're a pussy, but if you're too tough you're toxic, but also be a traditional family man, it's overwhelming. I'm not saying this to advocate for anyone, I do what I do so I can explore social constructs while also taking the piss.
