TEL
AVIV,ISRAEL – Evergreen, the new series of paintings by
Melanie
Daniel, reveals the culmination of the artist’s interest in how people
assimilate and camouflage themselves in their environments, combining a
sense of
strangeness with a sense of belonging. Daniel began painting after
immigrating
to Israel in 1995. For her photographic series Pleasantvale (2003),
which links
her early works with her current interest in the painting medium,
Daniel returned to her hometown, Kelowna in British Columbia, to
photograph a
seniors’ neighborhood built in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. Its
pastel-colored houses with manicured gardens, today standing in the
heart of a
rapidly sprawling city, look like the setting of an antiquated
television show
where time and modern worries stand still.