Judean Hills

�I didn't choose the landscape - the landscape chose me,� said Anna Ticho of her response to Jerusalem. For nearly seventy years Anna Ticho lived and worked in the city, expressing her deep feelings for it and its surroundings in her landscape drawings and paintings. Ancient stones and windswept trees and local characters with their own personal landscapes etched into their faces were her prized subjects. This drawing of the Judean Hills is part of Ticho's late oeuvre. After the 1960s there was a major change in her style: her precise drawings in black and white were enriched with warm brown pastels and began to fill large sheets of paper. There was a blending of light and shade, and the sketches incorporated many hidden layers. Ticho observed the landscape as an individual, conveying a personal, even intimate, perception of it. Her gaze lingered on the withered plants on the hillsides and the mountainous terrain, and then moved on to the never-ending horizon, which was for her a metaphor for the eternal Jerusalem. In one of her rare personal notes, Ticho wrote: "I came to Jerusalem when the city was still pristine, with its vast expanses and breathtaking beauty. I was overwhelmed by the grandeur of the landscape, the bare hills, the ancient olive trees and grooved slopes - the feeling of loneliness, of eternity."