Shimrit   Klier-Yariv  was born in Jerusalem in 1974.
She started her artistic training   under   the tutorial   of  the   artist
Shlomi  Hagay,  at  his Nachlaot  studio   in Jerusalem,  where  
she was  introduced  to the technique of classical oil painting.
During that period,  she graduated in Philosophy  and  Art History  
in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Following her graduation,
she started studying arts at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and
Design.
Today she is an independent painter, and resides in the USA.

Artist Statement:
"My art explores the duality of construction and destruction, memory and
oblivion. With accurate and controlled brushwork, I create a
representational image that is gradually "ruined" - covered and erased by
another kind of image, chaotic and amorphous - through "accidental"
gestures. Throughout the work process I rebuild and destroy and so
forth, emphasizing the struggle between being in control and getting out
of control.  
My preferable subject matter is face. The portrait, which resembles an
icon, emerges from and merges into the background and appears as if
rising from the ruins.
My images derive from the ancient world: the classic Roman frescos as
well as mannerist paintings and murals, but also Byzantine icons and
sarcophagi from Fayum. The portraits are of imaginary women, they
aren't existing people but they have very individual features and they
carry their own facial expressions, they also fit into the modern definition
of beauty.
They represent the collective memory of ancient art and culture, yet they
seem very contemporary. The faces might be of saints (martyrs) or
sirens. They seem to be ecstatic, maybe spiritually, religiously or sexually,
so they carry a duality: they are transcendental as well as erotic,
abstinent as well as tempting. Yet, their image is destroyed and forgotten
through the process of creation and wreckage, so these are no portraits
in the
traditional sense as a representational image of a specific person, but
rather an attempt to capture the image of portraits. So these are, in a
sense, portraits of portraits. Moreover, because of the deconstruction on
the surface of the canvas, the memory, also, is a memory of ancient art
rather then a memory of a person. The image of "memorium" therefore, is
a relevant image of the painting as a whole.
I believe that the strong imagery of memory naturally engages the element
of death. In my paintings, death appears in its duality:  the termination of
physical existence with the aspiration for transcendental essence.
Another aspect of death isrevealed by the grief over fading beauty and
youth. In the work process I study the subject of dying and fading as time
passes. So, in a way, the process of work is a metaphor to theaction of
time, and the marks of "action painting" reflect a natural process."

                                                                                                       S. K.