Whenever Israeli painter Mira Raman has a gallery show, there’s one thing she can always count on: A psychotherapist invariably approaches her and tries to analyze her work.
“They ask all kinds of questions,” she says in a phone interview from her Tel Aviv home. “They say, ‘You have a beautiful soul’ and then they ask me how I came up with all these colors.”
It’s a good question given the striking splashes of cherry red and canary yellow she lays down on her outsized canvases. Art lovers can see for themselves when Raman joins the lineup at this year’s Sausalito Art Festival on Labor Day weekend.
This is not Raman’s first trip to the Bay Area. She first played tourist here 20 years ago, and again last year while driving cross-country with her husband and three kids. Her 2004 itinerary included several art shows and a visit to Sausalito.
“I’m a modest person,” says Raman, “but I believe in what I’m doing. So I said that if I believe, I should apply [to the Sausalito Art Festival] because it is the best.”
Raman had little trouble making the cut. She is well-known in Israel’s art community for her work as a teacher and as a painter. But once hard times hit the Israeli economy a few years ago, she had to look outside the country’s borders to make a living.
“Someone said to me, ‘Come to Philadelphia. There is a show there.’ I flew in and after seven hours I sold all my paintings. I felt like Cinderella.”
Her work enchants thanks in part to the dreamlike tableaux she conjures, often employing recurring icons such as the moon, the sun, the sea and the occasional flying kite. “My work is a lot of fun,” she says. “It draws a lot of attention. People say to me, ‘You must be a very happy person,’ but life is not easy.”
The same could be said for many residents of Israel, who have endured more than their share of terror, sorrow and dashed hopes over the years. But Raman, 48, like so many of her fellow Israelis, exudes a hopeful spirit.
She was born in Syria to parents of Argentine and Syrian extraction, but came to Israel as a baby, growing up just south of Tel Aviv.
Raman recalls as a young child cutting up copies of her mother’s Paris Match magazines and making crude collages. “I had a lot of imagination,” she says. “I remember feeling that whatever I cut would come true, that I could create my own reality.”
After serving in the army, she studied art history at Israel’s State Art Teachers Training College in Ramat Hasharon and at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore (where she perfected her nearly flawless English). For years Raman taught art in Israeli high schools, including at a Negev Desert boarding school run by her husband, Ehud, a cultural anthropologist.
After relocating to Tel Aviv in 1993, she opened her own studio, disproving the old saw, “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” Says Raman, “I found there was so much I wanted to say after all those years of not listening to myself. It was the right time to do it.”
Her style incorporates some Japanese influences, especially her use of handmade paper and kanji (Japanese calligraphy). Noticeably absent from her paintings is overt Jewish imagery, but Raman dismisses criticism along those lines. “It’s not Judaica,” she says of her work, “but Israelica.”
Every morning, Raman mentally prepares for work by strolling through the gardens of Tel Aviv University or along the sandy paths of the city’s Mediterranean beaches. After a cup of coffee in a busy café, she’s ready to paint.
And whether or not her canvases contain Jewish images, she knows she’s a proud Jewish Israeli through and through.
“I believe in order to be Jewish you don’t have to dress or behave Jewish,” she says. “You have to feel Jewish.”
The Sausalito Art Festival runs 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday through Monday, Sept. 3-5, at Marinship Park, Sausalito. Tickets: $5-$20. Information: (415) 331-3757 or www.sausalitoartfestival.org.