Though her practice is primarily based on drawing and printmaking, Orit Hofshi frequently experiments and disregards what would be labeled as common formalistic conventions. Much of her work is focused on the relation between nature and social occurrences. Her process is characterized by the consistent preoccupation with the dimension of time. She is constantly searching for ways of making time palpable—personal time, the present time, historical time, calendric time, as well as geological, environmental, and human activity remnants’ time—examining these different temporal dimensions against the limitations of human understanding.
Hofshi is based in Herzliya, Israel, following a decade of studying, working, and exhibiting in the United States. She received her MA in Arts from Leeds University, UK, and first studied in the Wizo College of Design in Israel. She continued her studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where she majored in painting and printmaking.
“I spend a great deal of time in various natural settings and am attracted to extreme and rugged landscapes, taking numerous photographs, which nourish my thinking and processing in the studio,” she declares in her artist statement. “The landscapes are typically proposed as places, occupied and unoccupied, touched and untouched, rarely fully committed in a specific context. In such dramatic natural contexts, I find an emphasized sense of evolution, time and struggles, not only as records of natural phenomenon but also as reflections of human history.”
Orit Hofshi's residency at McColl Center is supported by the Windgate Charitable Fund.