The public’s responses to Roee Suffrin’s paintings constantly cite a question or dilemma which the paintings arouse in them, as though the paintings function as a mirror. This is the question which they cite:

Phase 1 – will the principle figure in the painting attain his true being, his true development?

Phase 2 – this initial impression then becomes internalized and the power of the painting arouses in the spectator the same question with regard to himself.

Phase 3 – a form of reciprocal interaction then takes place, where the figure in the painting continues to question the spectator and the spectator returns to the image, scrutinizes it, and scrutinizes himself again.

We can see this process at work in this painting:

In this powerful painting, the woman – typically modern – is subjected in the part of herself which is the most elevated, the most social visibly, and the most expressive – her face – to multiple actions by cosmeticians or directors who wish to change her, improve her and make her conform to their aesthetic norms, i.e. become a consumer object. The actions on her face are directed from three or four different sides simultaneously. The woman clearly does not have the right to move. The colors that are put on her face change her image and her contours.

She follows these transformations with concern and attention: she observes closely what she becomes in their eyes, and “who” she becomes. Her parted lips express stupefaction and apprehension, but she remains motionless and is unable to stop the process.

She observes herself in the mirror. The gap between the dark image and the cosmetic work she is undergoing tells us that her inner gaze does not resemble how others see her. The question arises: where is she truly herself; she no longer knows. The many vertical bars that separate the two images accentuate the differences. It is probable that where she is the most real, she is also the most false, and yet, this is how it is. In contrast, the dark image seems to camouflage her real self, and it is only a partial image. Even, in the main image, the top part of her head is cut.

A lie is thus constructed: in the image which seeks to show her beauty and depict her as a model for others, the real her has been replaced by an object which is undergoing treatment on all sides. This is reinforced in the fact that the technical personnel turn their Retour on her and pay no attention to her.
The challenge of the process of development is underlined in the differences in the colors, in the undefined features, in the invisible white of the female silhouettes whose faces possess only a few features, in the reflection in the mirror, and finally in the woman who is not whole.

A huge transformation machine has taken over and the numerous artificial lights express this well.

The woman is no longer herself. What remains is her enormously blown-up image, for, most probably, only her image has value as a sales product, and her true reality is of no interest to anyone, only to herself. And this is the challenge: will she survive in the midst of the process that has been imposed on her or to which she lends herself? This is the drama which every woman faces today.
Those who manipulate the woman are also only partially people, human beings. They are anonymous professionals, mere silhouettes without a being. It is amazing to see that the part of the woman which is the most real (the reflection in the mirror) is rendered in black, as though she is trying to hide or preserve her true being.

The woman is depicted as a victim of the consumer society. But, in the eyes of the painter, she is not defeated, but triumphs, as him, with him.

It is the professionals who use all kinds of electronic aids to touch up images and sell cosmetic products who are defeated. They disappear in an invisible white. The lone woman succeeds in saving herself from the consumer machine, just as Miriam succeeded in saving all her people and all men. The painter also stands for the man who truly loves this contemporary woman who represents all women today.

My poem expresses this relationship between the painter and the woman; it is a relationship in which the two never try to falsify the authenticity and immensity of love.

Poem: I-you love me

- I love you, says the bird to the flower.

* You love me, how good it is to hear!
But how can you love me without knowing me?

- I know you:
You are one of the beauties in the garden.

* You love me because I look like others,
like pretty pictures.
But as soon as you will see another beauty,
you will leave me.
You will jump from beauty to beauty.

- I love your beauty.

* But I am not that beauty,
I am myself.
And you do not know whether my real me
is as beautiful as the images you admire.
Are you beautiful in your inner self?

- Lend me your pupils
and I shall look at myself in your clear water.

* Are you sure that it is pure enough?

- Look at it deep within my pupils.

* How will I know if it is you
or me or the reflection of the sky?

- Know it well,
the world is night, complete darkness,
even in the day,
but if I am your light,
and if you are my light,
we shall light up the full moon and make the universe shine.

* Or you know how to speak beautifully,
or you are the secret of my whole being.

- You doubt me, my beauty,
But I doubt myself even more, be sure of that.
When I see you, I begin to doubt
that I am armed with wings.
I prefer your aerial-like petals.

*- One thing is certain,
you and I are the same.

We also find this secret hiding place, rendered in a dark color, in another painting, where a baby’s leg is strangely painted dark. The pleasant aspect of the image of the baby – with its classic baby eyes so pleasing to adults – preserves this pure part of the new human being. But he too is partial, as in the cosmetician scene, and this is so at every stage of his life that is depicted in the painting.

As the child grows older, his face disappears in favor of clothes and, as from pre-adolescence, he becomes a mere publicity tool (for cars, glasses, trousers, T-shirt).
Ultimately, it is probably only the initial face on the left which counts. A question is posed regarding the future: will he succeed in remaining intact?

The silhouette of the child whose face has just one feature poses this question and underlines it by pointing to the enigma of the dark leg. There is real mystery in this individual, as in every individual.

And the partial, white silhouette on the far right speaks for every adult who looks at this painting, as if to say: “what will become of this child, and what have you become, you too? But all hope is not lost in the consumer machine represented by the vertical bars: your future is still entirely intact. Do not lose the immense happiness or the promise of creation which appears in the face on the left, which you once had and which you still have.”

This painting is not like a psychological or psychotherapeutic 30-volume treatise. It communicates through a mass of colors and forms, through their inter-relationship and through aesthetics that are impossible to describe.
And, finally, it reveals to us one major question: the issue of how to develop well, with love. This is what Abraham, alone among the ancient Sages, discovered by himself, like a true artist: the world was created on the basis of love, on a love that develops. I have only described the most superficial part of this process and I tried to communicate it through other things, through words, whose aim is simply to make us more sensitive to the external image and to the corresponding internal image.

These paintings, which delve into the essence of things, do not arouse in us anguish or confusion, as do many paintings of the Middle Ages or the Renaissance. On the contrary, they have the effect of touching our deepest selves. This latest work by Roee Yosef Suffrin, awoke in me emotions similar to those described by Rumi, the great Persian poet of the Middle Ages, in quatrain 764:

. Eshgh, love, from infinity to eternity it was and will be.
He who seeks love must not count.
Tomorrow, when the resurrection will reveal it completely,
the heart which did not succeed in living thus in love will fail the test of existence.”

And in quatrain 805:

“ Bi Eshgh, Without love, joy and festivity cannot develop.
Without love, existence cannot become good or harmonious.
If hundreds of drops of water descend from the clouds to the sea
without the movement of love, a hidden pearl will not appear.”

The child’s face full of happiness, on the left, moves my heart to tears and I recite with this child, who is within us all, quatrain 285:

“ Sheshm, my eyes are full of the face of the Beloved (God, life).
To live with this act of seeing, is good, because the Beloved is within.
So, look, it is perhaps the Beloved, there is no difference
for the Beloved is in the gaze, or the gaze is Him (God).”

What Roi Suffrin brings to us, in all his works, whether he paints figures absorbed in Jewish study and rituals, or whether he uses stylized representations reminiscent of futuristic animation films, or a fusion of the conceptual and the symbolic, is a positive dynamic, rather than a negative one. He achieves this through an inner fusion of love and beauty which only art can express, unlike philosophical or phenomenological treaties, and which we see in Rumi’s quatrain 449:

“ Love, is that by which a people become happy.
When love is there, it engenders happiness.
Me-us everyone, it is not the mother who gives birth, but love.
Hundred of blessings and praises for this mother who is love.

Praises also for this artist who received it and transmitted it.

In the power that emanates from these two figures (the young woman even more than the baby), the painter sends us, through our gaze, a dramatic message which we also find in Rumi’s quatrain 557:

“ It is from love that the fire of youth will rise.
In the chest, images of the face of life will spring forth.
And if you have the intention to kill me, certainly the law will be with you
but know that when even if a friend kills you, life will spring forth again.”

I feel that I also see, in another painting, the child who becomes the young woman who escapes from the cosmeticians’ machines; she is now an adult at the heart of a gigantic consumer machine. The stakes of existence continue:

Here is the painting. The baby has become the young woman, but what is at stake is the same. One finds again the huge, commercial, futuristic, architecture, the consumerism, the mirror that seeks the truth, the dark arm of the woman who is natural, and the contrast between the stages of the faces – the white face, the simple line, the semi-figurative, and the dark face which is true to itself but partial and seeking. And there is the gaze which touches our deepest selves and places us at the very center of the dilemma.

She will not fail in the struggle, this woman, who seems to express the words of quatrain 175:

“ Insaaf. Justice you give, because love is a worthy act,
but the harm of evil is always near,
and what you call love (looking at me) only has love in the word
for between the desire for lust and love, a very long road separates them.

The boldness of the powerful gaze, so direct and pure, pays a great tribute to womanhood. It is what one would wish to happen for, then, the world would be saved. This is what the painting seems to be saying.
And quatrain 185 expresses this perfectly:

“Eh djaane. O soul of my heart, there is a path from it to my heart.
And my heart is on the alert to find this path.
Because my heart, like water, is pure and delicious.
Pure water is a mirror which captures well the moon.”

In this world of machines, the whiteness of the woman and the power of her gaze sets us before the only truth that can save us, as is so well written at the end of quatrain 750!

“Ab. Water which is not clear, is poison.
The poison which will purify you, is water.”

In a world that has lost its bearings and chases only after money, is indifferent to wars, the poor, and victims, this strong woman, eshet hayil in Hebrew, like Miriam who saved the Jewish people and the world from the slavery of Egypt, gives us this message:

“She who loves, it is her: when you approach the edge of the grave,
from the garden of heaven, she opens before you a thousand doors.”

Like Miriam, she has won:

“In the water of purity, I cause everything to melt like salt.
And neither blasphemies, nor faith, nor certitudes, nor doubts subsist.
At the very heart of my heart, a star has made its apparition.
And even the seven heavens have become lost in this star.”

Happy are those who can take delight in the beauty of these paintings.

When an encounter sets before two beings the real questions, we are at the essence of Jewish transmission, as in this painting by Roee Yosef Suffrin:

The two figures are at first focused on the search for truth, but in light.
Then, as quatrain 616 tells us:

“When, in my heart, love for you is a flame,
except your love, everything has turned into cinders
and we have placed intellects, hierarchies and books on the shelves,
it is poems and love songs which become our study.”

These paintings take us, in this way, to the limits of truth, as quatrain 1035 tells us:

"Kin didanist goftane nist khamosh,
This essential must be seen and not said. Be silent."