art treatise
joy and imagination
Naomi TLitzenblatt spreads happiness and beauty with unique characters by Kathryn Manis HOUGH Naomi Litzenblatt is a painter by practice,
she thinks of herself as an artist in the broadest
sense of the word; she is influenced by all sorts
of art forms, including writing, dance and music.
Growing up, Litzenblatt wanted to be a balle-rina
and she practiced dance until her later teen
years. During this time she attended The School
of Performing Arts in New York City for two years and practiced often
in Carnegie Hall. It was when she enrolled
at the City College of New York to pursue
her art education degree that Litzenblatt’s
focus shifted.
Though she no longer performs as a
dancer, movement and musicality are fun-damental
to Litzenblatt’s visual art practice.
She even describes her brush preference
in terms of instruments. “I like very fine
work in the sense that the color should be
just so. I look at my brushes like a musical
instrument, like a violin,” she explains. “I
use very tiny brushes, with very few hairs
because I love the way the color develops
with such subtlety.”
She often listens to the work of classical
composers like Bach and Chopin to put her
in the ideal mindset as she paints. The influ-ence
of music is particularly evident in the
Naomi Malka Litzenblatt creates art influenced
by music and dance.
series titled Opera and Music and Dance,
but motion and lyricism are inherent to all
of Litzenblatt’s pieces and each of her figures possesses an overt grace
and vibrancy. Works like “Unity” demonstrate the balance and sense
of connection that govern Litzenblatt’s understanding of the world
and her art. Water, in particular, plays a recurring role in her imagery
because, as she notes, she is often influenced by the natural environ-ment
in which she lives.
One painting features three central figures that appear to be par-tially
submerged in a large body of water. Their heads and shoulders
bob theatrically next to a small sailboat, indicating fantastical scale
and providing a whimsical context clue. They seem to sway grace-fully
and as a group, recalling coral or seaweed lightly tossed by the
residual churning of surface waves. Their stocky legs grow like plant
stalks out of the sea floor and their arms morph into thin reeds as
they stretch them above their heads and into the matte blue sky. The
figures touch in small but meaningful ways, either through limbs or
proximity, creating a small cycle between themselves and the natural
environments they straddle. Heads upturned with broad and bright
red smiles, the dancing figures relish their freedom and celebrate
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their connection to each other and the
world around them.
In another painting, Litzenblatt depicts
a charmingly ecstatic violinist. Small birds
perch atop his head and the musician
begins to play. As he begins his song, a
quiet grin dances on the musician’s lips
and his eyes gently close. Lifting his chin
slightly and delicately gripping the instru-ment’s
bow, the performer seems to allow
the music to transport him somewhere
beautiful and peaceful. The peacefulness
of the violinist’s expression is paralleled in
the composition’s color palette. Primarily
rendered in warm colors, the tones used
in the piece are muted and earthy. Though
there are no lines to explicitly indicate
motion, the position of the figure’s head
and hands, and the impressionistic
application of paint in the scene around
him, grant the violinist’s portrait a
dynamic and subtle kinetic energy.
There is an element of fantasy to all of Litzenblatt’s work. This is
largely because the characters she paints arise purely from her mind,
as she enters a kind of flow state in the painting process.
Litzenblatt explains, “I’m an internal artist. I don’t know where they
come from; they just come from my head. I absorb what I see during
my daily life and I don’t usually know how it’s going to affect me or
show up in my art later. I don’t look at anything when I’m actually work-ing,
so it’s all from within.” Her art functions as an escape, in much the
same way that she hopes they might for viewers.
march 2019
COURTESY NAOMI MALKA LITZENBLATT