We’re looking forward to introducing you to Rhea Carmi. Check out our conversation below.
Hi Rhea, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to share your story, experiences and insights with our readers. Let’s jump right in with an interesting one: What makes you lose track of time—and find yourself again?
The process of painting.
It begins with thought, the subject, the message I want to convey, the materials that best speak for it. I consider how to bring it all to life.
Then, I let go.
I dive in, lose track of time, and in that flow, I find myself.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
Born in Jerusalem a city at once sacred and scarred, immutable and incendiary I carry in my being the paradoxes of place: beauty and brutality, transcendence and turmoil. These dualities shape not only who I am, but what I make. For over four decades, my work has emerged as both witness and elegy celebrating the indomitable human spirit while lamenting the cycles of conflict and corrosion that afflict it.
Navigating the terrain between material and metaphor, I employ a diverse vocabulary of media oils, sand, water, treated paper, canvas, wood layered and sculpted into surfaces that are as tactile as they are visual. These are not simply paintings; they are palimpsests of emotion, topographies of memory. They refuse representation, yet echo landscape and flesh, rupture and repair.
In their abstraction, my works become maps of feeling, of trauma, of time charts not of geographies but of inner states. They are, in essence, a personal archaeology: a diary written without language, chronicling not only my own lived experience but the enduring imprint of war, displacement, and the elemental struggle between creation and destruction.
This body of work resists spectacle and embraces resonance. It speaks not of power but of its abuses, not of narrative but of essence. Through it, I attempt to articulate the ineffable grief, resilience, longing rendered not as scenes but as surfaces that breathe, break, and persist.
My work has been exhibited internationally in Israel, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Canada, Australia, New York, and Los Angeles yet it remains rooted in the timeless, aching soil from which it was born.
Great, so let’s dive into your journey a bit more. What was your earliest memory of feeling powerful?
In 1981, following my first exhibition in a venue of real consequence met with reviews that did more than merely praise; they resonated I sensed the trajectory had begun. The long held aspiration to be not simply seen, but recognized, as an artist had moved from a distant hope to a palpable possibility. But recognition is not arrival; it is invitation. And so, I understood: the real work the enduring work lay ahead. Momentum is nothing without persistence. The power, the potential, the responsibility rested unmistakably in my own hands.
Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
In 1981, I arrived in Los Angeles, part of that great migratory tide drawn by the promise of possibility and, like so many, I came bearing work, vision, and hope. I assembled a portfolio, earnest and unfiltered, and took it from gallery to gallery. Doors stayed shut. The city, it seemed, was not yet listening. Discouragement hovered; the edge of surrender was near.
But out of this impasse came reinvention a quiet act of defiance. I built a website, modest in form but rich in intent, and sent it out like a signal flare. This digital gesture found a pulse. A door opened. An invitation arrived: TARFEST.
It was there that Peter Frank the critic, the curator, the rare seer of art’s deeper rhythms encountered my work. He didn’t just see it; he understood it. He curated my first solo exhibition at LAMG Gallery, lending the show his vision and gravity.
From that moment, the path unspooled. La Jolla came calling. Then Europe Germany, Italy, France each city adding a new layer to the journey. And back to Los Angeles again, the place where it all began but now, the city was listening.
I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. What’s a belief or project you’re committed to, no matter how long it takes?
I have committed irrevocably and with purpose to the making of art as an act of witnessing. My work manifests not only images, but urgencies: reflections of the world we inhabit, distortions of the world we ignore, and revelations of the world we imagine. I do not aim to decorate the present, but to disrupt it gently or otherwise with vision.
In a time when truth bends and noise prevails, art remains a sovereign language. My practice is a form of resistance, of resilience, of relentless inquiry. I make not to escape the world, but to enter it more fully through pigment, form, and gesture. What happens around us does not pass through me silently. I respond with marks, with making, with meaning.
Okay, we’ve made it essentially to the end. One last question before you go. What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
I dedicated myself heart, hand, and spirit to the pursuit of art, and in time, my work spoke for me across borders and boundaries. It carried my vision, my philosophy, like a current, flowing outward into the world.
But beyond the canvas, beyond the studio, I remained anchored by what mattered most: my family. I gave them my time, my presence, my love because devotion, like art, demands more than intention; it demands living.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://rheacarmi.com
- Instagram: rheacarmi
- Linkedin: Rhea Carmi
- Facebook: Rhea Carmi Art
