VITA ERUHIMOVITZ
 

​I have a special relationship with caves: I like walking in caves, climbing their walls, crawling through narrow tunnels in pitch black darkness. Completely surrounded by masses of rock, I feel hugged and comforted in the earth’s womb. When I was pregnant my body also became a cave. I felt that the cave that was me merged with the caves which I’ve been inside. Through this merging a sense of expansion appeared, connecting the life and consciousness within me and outside of me.

​

At that time I found the hundreds of sketches I have made in caves (often almost blindly in the dark) and brought them into the studio. This was when caves have found a way into my paintings for the first time. Quickly they became central to my work. I think of caves as refuge and demise, places of birth and death, caves of my mind, and caves of my body. For me caves are a spiritual place and a symbol of introspection.

​

Unlike caves, the spaces in these paintings have no distinct walls, yet often their boundaries are doming over the composition. They blend with the peripheral shadows or show through atmospheric layers. Similar to the edges of my perception, my paintings’ boundaries keep expanding when pushed at by the gaze.