Last Thursday, as part of the Women's Day events, an exhibition called "Studio" opened the Center for the Performing Arts in Modiin.

In the exhibition, which will continue to be displayed in the coming weeks, 13 women will present their paintings. These painters, all residents of the area, are distinct from each other and come from a variety of occupations; Teaching, science, design, tourism, housewives, high school students, military and high-tech women. What strikes them all is that they are students of the artist Limor Matisis Barnea from Modi'in.

"I was very excited," admits Matisis Barnea this week when asked about the exhibition, which stars her studio.

Visitors to the exhibition can be impressed by the paintings of Matisis Barnea's students, but there is nothing in them to attest to the extraordinary life story of their teacher. In a meeting with her, Matisis Barnea (52) is revealed as a fragile-looking woman, but it turns out that behind her appearance, enormous mental strengths are hidden.

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In the middle of life

At the age of 30, after the birth of her son Tomer (now 22), Matisis Barnea discovered that she had lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease that can affect all body systems. It is a disease in which the immune system works against self-components of the body, which is manifested in inflammation in various organs in the body, including the skin, joints, lungs, kidneys, brain and blood vessels. The disease is multiracial and multi-systemic and differs from one patient to another, and may manifest itself in general symptoms such as prolonged fever, fatigue, general weakness and hair loss.

"At first I felt fine," recalls Matisis Barnea. "But at some point the disease got to the joints, heart and lungs. It got more and more complicated and I realized I needed to change my lifestyle completely because I could not go on like this."

This change is reflected through the painting, which soon became her great love. After having to spend long days lying in bed, and after being hospitalized for two months, it became clear to Matisis Barnea that she needed something new in her life that would hold and strengthen her. "It was clear to me that from now on there must be a change," she says. "I was looking for how I, in the middle of life, start doing something I love. Before that I worked in fashion design and I had a lot of travels, in Israel and abroad. It is a very complex job and at that moment it was clear that I needed to downshift and needed work that I could do independently from home. That's how I started painting. "

The painting, she found, helps her a lot in dealing with the disease. "I think the whole thing of physical and creative activity helps to deal with things in life," she explains. "When you sit and do nothing everything intensifies and strengthens. "I always wanted to do it and it became something that really captivated me."

According to her, the same is true for yoga in which she is engaged these days as well. "I started yoga when I was very weak and slowly I noticed that it makes me feel really good and opens my joints," she says. "Physically today I feel much better."

"These are things that help me overcome," she continues. "But they also help me to the extent that I want to deal with them anyway, regardless of the illness, because it fills my time in such a way that I do not take time to think about the illness. I recommend everyone to engage in the things they love. Many times the illness is a place of mental reckoning. Of what is important to you in life, and in any case my message is a message of hope. "

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Do your best

Although the painting eased Matisis Barnea, it did not stop her from continuing to deal with the symptoms of the disease. "It's a chronic and annoying disease like most diseases," she says. "Of course it would have been better without it, but it's not a choice. Live with it. You try to do your best, reduce the amount of preoccupation with the disease and engage in other things. The drugs are mainly focused on times when health is shitty and today I do not take drugs continuously because overall I am opposed to the never-ending chemicals."

The disease was also the reason why she did not give birth to more children. "At that time they did not support pregnancy for lupus patients," she explains. "Today there is support, but then there were objections from here to the moon. I was already pregnant and the doctor firmly opposed me keeping it. The medical predictions around this matter did not bode well, and in my family everyone stood on their feet so I would not give birth again. "I was willing to raise four children because I was dying for children, but that was the situation then. I have no doubt that if it was today I would have had more children, but at the time the doctor scared us so we could not even think about it."

During the illness, the heart of Matisis Barnea was also damaged. "A few years ago, the disease took hold of the pericardium, and I also had a heart attack and catheterization," she says. "There's nothing to do, deal with what's there. During the year I have good times and there are times I just feel awful with Infernal pains, but there isn't much to do, you just wait until it's over. "There is no doubt that the body is getting weaker, but fortunately, today the seizures are less strong."

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How did you take care of the child when he was little?

"I was a 30-year-old girl and I was in bed for two consecutive months. My mother took care of the child a lot, and from a young age he functioned like an adult and was very responsible because he realized I could not get up. I was sick for years, and the hardest problem is when you have to raise small children and want to give them Answering everything. In those years I had such headaches that I could not lift my head. The disease causes the body to have no hemoglobin and there are very severe infections, you have no oxygen in the body and you are terribly poor. When he was a teenager I already had a better time, and today "It's a lot easier. He's grown up, he's independent and doesn't have those long seizures anymore.

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Drawing as support

Matisis Barnea began her career in the art world precisely in the field of ballet. She worked as a ballet teacher for a number of years and then completed a bachelor's degree in art history in the German city of Cologne.

When she returned to Israel, she specialized in fashion design at WIZO Haifa College and worked as a designer. In the midst of the acute health crisis that befell her, she entered the master class of the painter Israel Hirschberg and fell in love with painting.

She set up the studio in her home nine years ago, and it turns out to be a magical corner of wood and a lot of light coming in through the glass walls. The place itself is not large but creates a peaceful and pleasant atmosphere, right in a lovely corner in the heart of the city.

"The studio here is my corner," she smiles. "The area is not big and does not contain much and I also do not want it. I want the small and real thing that maintains the clean framework of learning. It is not a school and I do not make money here. I draw and I teach what I know, but I like all the others ".

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How did you start teaching painting in the studio?

"I worked a lot as an active painter in galleries and slowly this matter of mouth student name student developed. Today it goes into a more regular and normative framework. I really like working with students. They come once a week and it's usually full morning classes with very small groups. Not an economic business but something that comes out of development, something that happens in the studio automatically. If I had to get rich from it, it would be very difficult. I strengthen small groups for a long time. I do not believe it can be taught in a short time. In order to speak and comment, insights are born about what is important to you within art. "

A handful of students, most of them women, come to the studio to learn to paint, but over the years a special support group has also developed, with the students and the teacher sharing their lives and consulting with each other on various issues.

Recently, as mentioned, she recruited 13 of her students to an exhibition currently on display at the Modiin Hall of Culture. "This is the first time I'm doing such a thing," she enthuses. "For several years now, the desire to take and present my students' works has accompanied me, each time I came up with the idea but did not implement it. A few weeks ago I called the Hall of Culture and was told there was a vacancy in March, so I said 'come on, let's go for it.' "Yek Chek. Each one brought three works, and the things hung in the Hall of Culture. It turned out very nicely."

"What unites them all," Barnea says of her students ahead of the opening of the exhibition, "In addition to being women who run their lives, is that each of them has found a place for art and creativity in her life. It comes from the head, sometimes it's a kind of intuition when to intervene in the work process and wake up, to take the creator to a new and guided place without harming her independence and desires. "

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Still looking

Barnea Matisis works extensively in the studio with an inanimate model and a nude model, as well as with many landscapes that belong to the local Israeli experience. Jerusalem, Ein Kerem, the Titura Hill in Modi'in, the Judean Mountains, the anemones in Bari and Shokeda, the Yarkon and its sources, the Meir Dizengoff Garden, Ein Gedi, sabras and dates in the Latrun area, are just some of its painting sites. She returns to these places many times in order to understand what is in nature that is beyond realism.

The style that characterizes Barnea's paintings is the realistic style. "During the time I studied in Jerusalem," she recalls, "I got used to painting the landscapes of Jerusalem. There was a time when Judaica was commissioned from me and I really liked it. Then there was a time when I painted flowers, and now I work on different projects, each time in a different style."

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Do you sell your works?

"I sell occasionally. I used to sell through a gallery in an orderly fashion, but lately I have not been exposed to a crowd of buyers at all. I have no energies to mess with marketing. I do not think it goes along with painting. I have sold a lot in the past but right now it's not on the agenda. "I do not mess with it. I do not want to run after buyers because I am afraid it will fill my being and in the end I will not paint. I think it does not go together. You can not do both and in full concentration."

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Tell us about your work process.

"I work a lot of time on every job. I work very meticulously with a network of lines where I put everything in place and build the stains one by one. I find it very difficult to give up in the process. If something does not go I can get stuck for months. The process itself is a process of searching "

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