Portrait of the Artist's Mother

The paintings and sculptures of Michael Gross are rooted in the Israeli experience - its light, landscape, people, and drama. His works abound in dualities: They are sensitively expressive and starkly minimalist, figurative and abstract, soft and hard, warm and cold. Gross's portraits, often intimate depictions of family or friends, frequently touch on issues of light and the abstraction of nature. Over the years, he has moved from a figurative style to a more reductive abstraction, using softened geometric forms to convey the essence of the sitter. Portrait of the Artist's Mother is figurative, but the beginnings of abstraction are noticeable in the artist's flat treatment of the solid color patches. The figure is painted so that it fills the surface of the canvas and seems to extend beyond the picture plane, rendering the woman larger than life, uncontainable within the frame. Gross's connection to the Mediterranean light is here expressed by the pale, almost washed-out blue and yellow that suggest the effect of focusing on an object after being in the blinding local sunshine. This is an intimate portrayal of Gross's mother, whom the artist called "a wise woman, courageous and loyal without bounds, uncompromisingly honest and very industrious." And indeed, Leah Gross's personality and history are unmistakably present in this seemingly austere work.