THIS IS NOT A PAGE ABOUT NUMBER OF EXHIBITIONS THAT HAVE BEEN ATTENDED, NUMBER OF DIPLOMAS PURCHASED, OR VIPs WITH WHOM I RUBBED SHOULDERS.
IT IS A BIOGRAPHY OF AN ART-LOVING PERSON AND HIS ARTISTIC EVOLUTION, INSPIRATIONS, AND WORKING HARD AT ART
I was born in Iran. I was born twice. My second birth coincided with the death of a nation's aspirations and right to determine its own destiny. The oppression of millions of people's hope cost just 1 US million dollars. Mosaddegh was ousted and Iran has not recovered ever since. That was my socio-political birth, its parents being imperialism and colonialism.
At seven, living in despotic Iran, instructed by my father, a self-proclaimed poet, I took my first painting class. I was fascinated with watercolors set in little cubes in the rectangular metal box. "I am not going back to that class" I soon remonstrated, "it is not fun." Grid and realism ruled the westernized artistic circles in Tehran at that time. My imagination was unruly as my ability to resist authority. The poet caved in and provided his mentee with a playful and imaginative "teacher" to keep drawing and painting.
At 13 y-o the uprooting storms of the western colonial forces landed me in occupied Palestine setting in motion a turbulent, lengthy and contradictory process of becoming a socio-political person-artist. Beginning as a Zionist and ending as a non-violent conscientious objector, farming cotton fields, becoming a historian, witnessing the shattered dream of the equality and fraternity represented initially by the communal Kibbutz, and watching the rise of a horrible militant society aiming at ethnic cleansing and reversing the roles of the victim and perpetrator. Learning the art of woodwork and metalwork I refused arms work. Racism, poverty, and injustice, the hallmarks of the new settler colony in Palestine were battering my consciousness and conscious resulting in a move that paradoxically was about to further advance my passions of painting, writing, and becoming a doctor in psychology and a healing therapist.
We (with my wife Shlomit Mona Yerushalmi LCSW, and three children) moved to America at a historic time (1991). It was becoming evident that there is an inherent disharmony between the Republic and the Empire and between Democracy and Capitalism. America is at war with itself. It is a class war. About 400 individuals own almost as much wealth as the bottom half: 160.000.000! 70 million adults, and almost 9 million children and teens are on psychiatric medication; millions have made the streets their home, and millions of others live in poverty. The ecosystem of our planet is collapsing under the excesses of societies addicted to consumption.
Capitalism is an absurd system; it is "fundamental terrorism against all humanity". The brush, its strokes on canvas intensified, is my expression of revolt and non-participation in the most heinous crime in modern human history. The pen, my other expression challenges another structure of power in the healing industry (www.drherzelyerushalmi.org). As a doctor in psychology, I help in practice people who are expressing in their own particular fashion their angst and, at the same time, protest facing dehumanization, atomization and fragmentation of the spirit, body, and emotional-relational ties.
My paintings are the "I believe" of mine, of yours. My protest, as yours.
An individual has value only in the context of his/her community, within a collective, only as people. Art for profit defies human aesthetics. Van Gogh was a humanist who craved recognition, glossing over a deep need for LOVE, and who may certainly have felt strange in a Sotheby's or the ultra-modern fancy museums and art galleries with many artistically alienated customers in search of marketable commodities aiming at preserving capital and hoping for a hefty profit on their investment. Picasso represents the other pole of the artist who bulldozes for fame, singularity and becoming a myth. Yet how fascinating are his paintings from what I may call his "poor period" painting freely for the sake of painting, creating for the sake of creativity.
Art being basically subjective and intuitive has no place in formal learning or teaching. Art schools are what other schools are about: factories promoting the causes of the elites. No wonder so many healthy young students find it difficult or impossible to sit on wooden chairs for what feels like a decade-long 45 minutes staring at a bored teacher mumbling aloud boring verbiage.
Elitist sympathies are the real psychopathology of all times, contagious and contaminating art and artists those who do art, and those who try to do a living.
In a true society, everyone is an artist, with artifacts or existence. As Marx and Angels put it "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." Art is social action.
I invite you, the observer, to take part in this social action. Under such circumstances, my personal narrative in a painting of mine is anyone's narrative.
My paintings have been presented in solo and group exhibitions in non for profit venues with explicit social missions.
I have been selected to exhibit at Florence Biennale (2011) which, for obvious reasons, I declined.
My artwork received a special presentation in the book "Contemporary Painters" displaying the artwork of 100 contemporary painters from around the world.
With a Doctorate in clinical psychology and an innovative humanistic non-technical biographic-therapeutic approach (published as a book. www.drherzelyerushalmi.org), I have been helping people heal and live a life of relationships creatively, and artfully.
The dual existence, provided me with freedom of expression, free from market tyranny, which an artist or the therapist deeply needs when approaching the soul or the canvas to be worked on.
Art is therapeutic. Therapy is art, rather than a technique, as art is. Art could be a conduit for a New Relationships Paradigm. Human beings are relationship oriented. From very early on and all along the course of our life we search for relationships.
Through art, we relate. Art is a transformative experience in relatedness, to the self, others, and the surroundings.
Therapy is a relationship, an interpersonal one, A new relationship that never happened before, that challenges the boundaries of our self and world perceptions and thus may give birth to new growth experiences. Therapy may be a transformative experience.
The artist and the artful therapist both serve one core purpose or IDEAL: To make the world a better place. That is why BeelZan labors to paint and Dr. Herzel Yerushalmi co-founded Footprint New Jersey LLC,
In Between ALL lies Art.
A word about when one of my paintings touches a deep synapse in you:
Viewing art as an instrument of non-violent action for social change, BeelZan will contribute 40% to the BDS movement to help the Palestinian people under occupation and oppression; and contribute another 40% to to the charity fund at Footrpint, a center for Counseling and Therapy Services in Jersey City, to provide counseling to residents of the community who cannot afford the care they need. (The other 20% for covering art material expenses).
In recent years I work from my studio at Springfield New Jersey.