Netta Lieber Sheffer
During her first years of painting (1999-2004) Netta Lieber Sheffer focused on the concept of Home, expressing it in images describing place, searching for elusive, unattainable domesticity. The paintings mostly describe architectural spaces.
Tackling Home as a place brought up the question of movement and migration. Paintings of ships and tents described a loose connection to the ground; drawings of caravans attempted to ground a place essentially designed for motion. Preoccupation with questions of place and shelter, along with a constant echo of danger, were expanded to questions of permanency versus migration.
Lieber Sheffer's latest paintings include scenarios in which figures have a significant role in space. The human figure appears especially in a narrative-descriptive context, mostly as part of a group. The group takes away the importance of the individual. It intensifies the feeling of sameness and increases foreignness and loss of individuality. Groups of people reappear in the paintings, as taking part in various historical events, or within an historical context of another time and place. There are groups of pioneers, draftees, schoolchildren, sport teams. Some appear in a contemporary context, as groups of nudist.