Roni at the entrance to the Israel Museum –– Jerusalem – 2023

Exploring Expressionistic Painting: WHAT LAYERS OF PAINT SAY…

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ART BOOKS PUBLISHED BY ELISHEVA AND RONI MECHANIC — Available from AMAZON

Marc Chagall –– Israeli Artist

Bring Them Home!

The Wise Seek Him –– by Roni Mechanic, 2025 –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Notice that the forth person in this painting is me. I am being inquisitive and exploring what the three wise men are endeavouring to do.

How Helen and Roni gave expression to the tragic loss of the 40 children murdered by Hamas on 7th October, 2023

Helen painted the images of children floating up into the sky. While Roni depicted grave stones as symbols of the murdered children. These stones are also seen floating heavenwards. Included are three Cyprus trees which are often associated with burial grounds, as viewed in Roni’s painting.

Helen Burman, 2023

Roni Mechanic, 2023

What the Layers of Paint Say 

By Roni Mechanic –– Inspired by recent abstract paintings.

Introduction

Colour sings,
shapes speaks,
and lines are more
than what the eye beholds—
spirit traces echoes of the unseen.
Wassily Kandinsky once glimpsed this truth.

So too the artist paints—
not merely to show,
but to sound,
to let colour pray,
to let praise breathe.

Each canvas becomes a quiet altar,
each stroke, a whispered psalm—
layered with longing,
with wonder,
with the hush of the holy.

Each gesture is a note,
each hue a chord;
the canvas a silent symphony—
layered, rhythmic,
poem and pulse,
alive with something,
just beyond the visual.

Like music felt
through the body’s skin,
the colours move.

They breathe,
they weep and dance—
an abstract language
for the soul.

Layers of Sound

There are voices beneath the surface,
beneath the brush and broken line—
not loud,
but present,
like breath caught in linen,
like Scripture sung in the dark.

A colour trembles.
Another answers.
They speak in tongues—
of saffron, umber, and indigo—
ancient arguments
resolved in silence.

From dust and spirit,
the tapestry is stretched—
threads of mystery,
tangled yet divine.

In the chambers of time,
the pulse of nations stirred.
Two heartbeats in one womb,
two paths divided by a single cry.

Love and rivalry,
covenant and exile—
entwined like roots
beneath ancestral soil.

The breath of prophecy passed
through a mother’s pain—
Rebekah, torn by the war within,
felt the future shift inside her womb:
a tremor that would echo
through the centuries.

Still today,
in city streets and silent prayers,
in borderlands and broken altars,
the ancient wrestling continues.

The Artist’s Vision

The Creative Master made a choice,
bringing forth sons and daughters—
not merely of flesh,
but of calling,
of covenant,
of light drawn from the womb of chaos.

Jacob and Esau—
an eternal struggle,
born in silence and strife.
Rebekah bore more than children that day;
she gave birth to a tension
that shaped the world.

Jew and Arab—
twin destinies entwined—
still carry the weight
of ancient blood and blessing.

Letters emerge—
ancient Chaldaic, Paleo-Hebrew, 
and Aramaic,
fragments of Babel’s broken tower:

Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, and Latin.
Not merely differing tongues,
but diverging destinies
written in script.

Hebrew curves, 
Roman bones,
Greek questions carved 
in broken stones––
lines of faith and empires,
half-hidden, half-revealed,
as if the Word were still being written
in the dust of human longing.

Shattered pottery shards, mosaic fragments—
like lost memories echoing from the past.
Each piece a whisper
of what was spoken.
Each crack a vein of silence
holding meaning.

These remnants speak
in tongues of stone and flame,
where history bleeds into symbol,
and brokenness becomes design.

Alexander, Antiochus, Mattathias Maccabee—
we watched empires rise, 
then fall to dust and sea.
Hebrew curves, Roman bones,
Greek thoughts etched into exiled stones.

O seeker, sift the grains with care—
beneath your feet, lies buried there.
Lift your eyes, the thread still shines
from ancient cloth to end of time.

Yeshua, royal, priestly strand,
God’s own binding in the land.
His wounds are knots that tie and hold
the Torah, Spirit, and the gold.

And as the layers thickly paint,
each story worn, both bold and faint,
so too his presence, hidden deep,
awaits the ones who seek and keep.

The veil peels back, the colours blend—
a sacred thread that has no end.
Within the layers, truth is spun:
Yeshua—G_D’s eternal Son.

In the artist’s hand,
they find new order—
not to erase the fracture,
but to honour it.

To make of the broken whole,
and of the scattered, song.
Not Pictures, but Places
These are not pictures.

They are places—
maps of inner terrain
where the soul remembers
what the mind has forgotten.
Icons dissolve into abstraction,
but the holy remains.

A gesture becomes a sanctuary,
a texture, a psalm.
In every layer:
a question.
In every mark:

A memory.

In the space between:
the whisper of the Spirit
hovering,
still creating.

An invisible creative Guiding Hand—
the One who spoke,
and there was light;
form emerging from the void unknown—
Tohu Vavohu,
without form and void.

Just as the artist
grasps for those creative sounds,
so do we—
with brush, palette knife,
sculptor’s clay, or chisel—
tackling blank canvas, clay and wood,
fashioning not from certainty,
but from yearning.

From silence that longs to speak,
from chaos seeking order,
from shadows aching for the light.

We echo the First Artisan—
breathing life into dust and fiber,
calling forth structure from texture,
meaning from gesture,
and hope from hue.

Each mark becomes an offering,
each stroke, a fragment of prayer,
each layer, a testament
to the mystery of being,
and the mercy of becoming.

For what is creation
if not surrender—
to the unseen voice,
to the Spirit hovering still
over waters––
deep and untamed?

To Touch the Hem

For the artist, for the worshipper:
And so, we paint, sculpt, write—
not merely to create,
but to commune.

Each gesture,
each stroke of brush or word,
is an act of reaching
toward the unseen—
to touch the hem
of the garment of glory.

Fringes tipped with sky and light,
swaying at the edge of divinity.

Tekhelet Returns

A slender blue thread,
woven with white,
has quietly returned—
gracing the corners
of prayer and cloth,
almost unnoticed,
until it is everywhere.

It crept in softly,
like memory,
like longing finding form—
a whisper of blue sky
against fields of white.

Now it swings
from the tallit’s edge—
a thread reborn.

Tekhelet once lost,
now found––
in the rhythm of fingers 
tying sacred knots.
 
This week we read:

“Speak to the Children of Israel…”  
And still the voice speaks,
calling for corners—
marked with covenant.

With the blue of heaven,
the blue of remembering.
What was hidden in time
has returned in colour—
a renaissance of dye,
a revival of meaning.

Not just a thread,
but a promise—
a whisper of redemption
twisting through generations,
binding earth
to sky,
to G_D.

And somewhere,
a woman once reached
through the crowd—
to touch the fringe,
the p’til tekhelet,   
and found herself whole.

Layers of Paint Say: 

Thread of Heaven––
a thread of blue, sky-breathed and deep,
is woven where the edges sleep—
on garments kissed by desert wind,
a ribbon where the laws begin.

They said, “Remember, do not stray,”
so G_D dyed sky into the clay.
But who could find that holy hue
where tides conceal and time withdrew?

The chilazon, a mystery’s shell,
its dye once sought, untraceable,
rose from depths where secrets sleep,
the sea’s own shade the prophets keep.
Its blood—once hidden, now revealed—
spoke of a covenant unsealed.

So walked he once among the grain,
where sandals stirred the dusty plain.
No one saw the thread he wore—
it lay beneath the flesh he bore.

A hidden Messiah—now unveiled.

What is his name, once long concealed?
Who dares to name the Son of G_D,
the treasure buried in the sod?
A gleam beneath the desert’s hand,
a secret woven through the sand.

Not pearl or gem held in the hand,
but breath unstirred, divinely planned—
a silence speaking through his death,
a whisper stronger still than breath.

Tekhelet lost, now found anew—
not in dye, but what is true.
A thread not sewn on outer seams,
but stitched within prophetic dreams.

Yeshua, royal, priestly strand,
G_D’s own binding in the land.
His wounds are knots that tie and hold
the Torah, Spirit, and the gold.
Lift your eyes, the thread still shines
from ancient cloth to end of time.

And as the layers thickly paint
each story worn, both faint and quaint,
so too his presence, hidden deep,
awaits the ones who seek and keep.

The veil peels back, the colours blend—
a sacred thread that has no end.
Within the layers, truth is spun:
Yeshua—G_D’s eternal Son.

Unveiled

But who will dare to listen?
To behold what once was hidden?

Then, we did not know or see—
but now, with unveiled faces,
we perceive
what was veiled
in paint, wood, and clay.

Drawing near in wonder,
a new sound awaits
those willing to listen.
Ears unstopped,
eyes opened in amazement.

For what was forgotten
is now being declared.
We, with new perception,
see colours bright
illuminating the way—
ahead and beyond.

A hope recreated—
for all to see,
to hear,
and to know.
Amen, and Amen.
Hallelujah!