"I first came across Avital's work whilst enjoying a family supper in the home of the New York dealer, Iliya Fridman. He had just purchased Self Portrait Standing on Cardboard. For me, an instant envy and an instant wish to make a studio visit. As one critic wrote, Avital's work 'Flickers in the same fragile-fairylike-figurative-realistic territory in which something romantic is present and which embodies modesty as a temperament, a fragile stillness that must be protected from the terrible din of the current, the transient'. 

"Avital's studio, her own little kingdom of cardboard castles, gilded frames, peeling brickwork, flowers in crevices, cardboard boxes and tubes, relishing the everyday beauty of the every day. Once upon a time, kings lived in castles, knights fought for romantic glory, to gain their maiden's hand and few could be fairer than The Portrait of Adi as Maria Portiniari.  They say 'My home is my castle' but for far too many rootless, nomadic travellers that castle is made from discarded cardboard.

"On my first visit, I acquired a tiny working oil sketch of a Blue Lamp standing on a pile of cardboard boxes.  I left elated and humbled and knew that I would buy more. From her gallery in Tel Aviv, I added to my addiction by purchasing House on the Floor and most recently a beautiful impasto The Alfama Self Portrait. 

"Avital's draughtsmanship, her disciplined palette draws on her love of the richness and textures of her Renaissance mentors but honed right back to the sensitive colour tones that her time at The Slade School informs. Her work echoes the teachings of Patrick George, Euan Uglow, Andy Pankhurst.

"Avi Pitchon writes: 'Her use of a relief-like painting technique: the oil paint itself mixes the dried remnants left on the palette with fresh paint, packed and piled onto the canvas until it protrudes from the surface and takes on a relief-like sculptural quality. This features to various degrees in the paintings of flowers, cardboard boxes and self portraits'.

"Fragments of grandeur, peel back the layers, we can't live in yesterday but Avital shows us how yesterday's skins can live in tomorrow."

- Nick Crean, December 2020

Avital Burg's solo exhibitions include Fridman Gallery, New York, NY; Browse & Darby in association with Crean and Company, London, UK; Pamela Salisbury Gallery, Hudson, NY; Slag Gallery, New York, NY; and Neve Schechter Gallery, Tel Aviv, ISR. Her work was part of two-person exhibitions at Arts at AJU, Los Angeles, and Club Caltural Matienzo, Buenos Aires. It was recently included in group shows at Nazarian / Curcio, Los Angeles, CA, the Islip Art Museum, NY, Lehman College Art Gallery, Bronx, NY, among other venues. She was the May 2022 artist in residence of the Interlude Residency in NY, and of the Peleh Residency in California in 2019. Burg's work are part of many collections world-wide, among them are the Louis-Dreyfus Family Collection, NY, The Bank Leumi art collection, Israel, and Mr. Dov Shiff collection, Florida. Burg attended the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem, “Hatahana” school of figurative drawing and painting, Tel Aviv, The Slade School of Art, London, and the New York Studio School.

Between the cracks in the pavement on the way to my Brooklyn studio and on the sides of the farm road leading to my small upstate summer studio, blue chicories push through the ground. At dawn, they are bright, warm blue and as the day progresses, they fade into the pale, smokey evening pink. Even when I pull their woody stems out of the dirt and bring them into the studio, their transformation and grasp to life, persists. Observing and painting them daily, I journal the passage of time and the evolution of place, while the paint on my palette and canvas is in continuous motion.

Seasonal portraits with the background of the view from my studio’s window, an annual self-portrait on my birthday, and the cyclic return to painting blooming wildflowers are all part of my ongoing exploration of the tangibility of time. In an era of social detachment, saturated by the depthlessness of rapidly flickering images, I deliberately slow down my practice in order to become intimate with that which is tactile and temporal.

When I mix old dry paint pieces from my palette into fresh paint and work to create a surface that is reminiscent of low-relief sculptures, I think about how the present moment encapsulates different times. Some of my canvases are painted over three or four previous works, some paintings reveal the bare linen surface, marked by a few brushstrokes where I wiped my brushes after finishing a day’s work on a different painting. Over time, as I experiment with the materiality of oil on canvas, the surfaces became thicker and lusher. Therefore, while contemplating the impermanence and fragility of material existence, the completed paintings reflect my labor, my gaze, and my rhythm, in the hope of slowing down the viewer’s experience.