About Nurit Gazit, creative artist

 

I was brought up in Jerusalem. After high school I served in the Israel Defense Forces as a  teacher-soldier and then studied Tanach (Bible) and Oral Law in the Bayit Vegan Michlala (college) for women. I studied guided imagery and movement therapy in Shalem College and became a certified therapist. For years, I have been giving free-flowing imagination based workshops and seclusion retreats.

For many years, I have lived in Otniel in the Hebron Hills area with my husband Ofer and our family. I, the mother of eight children, am also a grandmother of three.
I run the Zericha Center for Spiritual Development in the Hebron Hills Regional Council.

Music – Music and singing have accompanied me throughout my life, starting from my formative years when I studied music in Jerusalem’s youth orchestra. Throughout  my adult years I have performed to women-only audiences around the country, performances in which I  sang and recounted Shlomo Carlebach tales.
I inherited my musical abilities from my grandfather, Dov Zweig z”l , who was the regular chazzan (cantor) in the Mossad Harav Kook synagogue in Jerusalem’s Kiryat Moshe, and from my father, Aryeh Zweig, who also serves as chazzan on the Yamim Noraim (High Holy Days). I grew up in a household permeated with the sounds of classical music. From my mother, Sarah z”l, I absorbed her tremendous love for her children and her dedication in raising them. While I was also an artist, my children and family life always came first.

 

Poetry – Over the years I began to write poems based on my life experiences. Many of them have been published in our regional magazine Daroma.

Her works are also In the journal "paths" for art and literature which is published twice a year.

Painting – This form of artistic self-expression emerged later in life as a revelation. One day, when my oldest daughter  Tehilla was a baby, I closely perused a book of photographs of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. I found myself with pencil and paper in hand, and proceeded to draw the Rebbe’s profile. I had never sketched anything before, and I have no rational explanation for the way it happened, but I was amazed by the results. From that moment on, I felt that the Rebbe had inspired me to pursue a talent previously latent inside me.
 

I participated in the eight exhibitions below: some were solo, some were group exhibitions.
Gerard Behar Center, Jerusalem – General Art Exhibition
Kiryat Arba – General Art Exhibition
Begin Center, Jerusalem – Curator of the exhibition in which I displayed some of my works 
Gush Etzion Matnas (Community Center) – Solo exhibit
Art Gallery in Ofra – Solo exhibit
Yakar Center for Arts and Creativity in Jerusalem – Solo exhibit
The Metarim Artist Center in the Hebron Hills Regional Council – Curator of a General Art Exhibition
The Metarim Artist Center in the Hebron Hills Regional Council – A solo exhibition following the publication of my book, The Ninth Birth.

A solo exhibit in Masada-  (August-September, 2014)

My paintings flow from my inner world and are influenced by my natural environs and inner feminine essence.
My father's grandfather, Rav Shlomo Zalman Zweig z”l,  was an artist and painter who lived in Jerusalem's Old Yishuv. His pictures are still hanging in Batei Knesset in Meah Shearim, and one painting was displayed in the Israel Museum many years after his death. Evidently I inherited his talents.

I teach painting to private groups and individuals.
 

The Zericha Center – Four years ago I founded a Center for Spiritual Development (in the Hebron Hills Regional Council), associated with the Matnas (Community Center). The Zericha Center hosts a variety of workshops, cultural evening activities, and discussion panels.
 

The Metarim Artist Center
I founded the Metarim Artist Center, which has featured several exhibitions of My work over the years. The  Metarim Artist Center represents the Hebron Hills Regional Council and is a showcase for its residents’ talents.
We hope that this center will: serve artists who live in the area as well as artists from other places; create encounters and dialogue among artists; and reveal the importance of the variegated world of art in our daily lives.
 

Excerpts from articles about Nurit Gazit:
 

Srugim: About The Ninth Birth
 

After giving birth to eight wonderful children, Nurit created a spiritual work of art. Her book combines drawing and poetry and involves the reader in the various facets of a woman, artist, wife and mother.
In the encounter between the pictures and poems, an inexplicable discourse develops. The artist engages in a dialogue with the keystones of Judaism in an ongoing search for her place in the world.

From DatiLi site: Connection of the upper and lower worlds
 

Over the years Nurit held two solo art exhibitions, one in the Gush Etzion Community Center and the other in an art gallery in Efrat. Gazit also displayed her works in two group exhibitions of Torah-observant Jews in Kiryat Arba and Jerusalem. Her paintings open a rich spiritual world covering a variety of subjects: from engagement to wedding, pregnancy and motherhood; as well as mountainous settings and spiritual landscapes. Nurit’s paintings are always symbolically oriented to Judaism and suffused with spirituality. […] The powerful statement emerging from the paintings is about the “dialogue that man holds with God Almighty and the powerful desire to grow closer to Him,” as Nurit phrases it.