Tale

The Tale series looks into the boundary between seeing and imagining, the zone where objective and subjective vision intermingle - creating a feeling of vision in chaos, on the edge of legibility.

Many things lie submerged in the work’s undulating sea of images, becoming visible by slow viewing.

Israel is an artist with medical conditions that result in nocturnal hallucinations. The images created are drawn from these subjective experiences.

To make these drawings, Israel combines the almost obsolete Victorian ’brass rubbing’ technique with her collection of several hundred embossed objects. The process involved is immersive, painstaking and intuitive.

For Israel, the effect of ‘rubbing’ these images feels like the perfect way to express her hallucinations, where ever expanding seas of woven images and half-glimpsed, interconnected forms arise and intermingle, creating a personal psycho-geographical map.

Tale, 42 x 34cm, 2025. Graphite on tracing paper.

Tale, 42 x 34cm, 2025. Graphite on tracing paper.

Tale, 51 x 38cm, 2025. Graphite and acrylic paint on tracing paper.

© Jo Israel 2025