The art of healing

From a sniper rifle to paintbrushes, Daniel Wein finds emotional rehabilitation after taking a shot in Gaza war.

By BARRY DAVIS
Daniel Wein accepts his award from Brig.-Gen. Avner Paz-Tzuk. (photo credit: Courtesy)
Daniel Wein accepts his award from Brig.-Gen. Avner Paz-Tzuk.
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Eight years ago, Daniel Wein was a happy-go-lucky 15-yearold doing regular teenage stuff in his hometown of Melbourne, Australia. Last summer, as a member of the IDF Nahal Brigade, he was shot in the leg while serving in the Gaza Strip on the fourth day of Operation Protective Edge. He went into the operating room, followed by a couple weeks of hospitalization, a couple of months of recuperation and a longer period of physiotherapy.
“I had one operation and they want me to do another one for aesthetic reasons, but one operation is enough for me,” he says. “I don’t want to see any more hospitals.”
Fully understood.
It was while he was bedridden, at the Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Campus in Petah Tikva, where his father works as a doctor, and subsequently at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, where he began to undergo physiotherapy, that Wein’s thoughts turned to a new pursuit. A few weeks after being wounded with a rifle in his hands, he found himself taking up paintbrushes and starting to express some of his emotional baggage by producing striking oil paintings.
The young man’s new channel of visual articulation proved to be much more than just a transient phase or, indeed, a way to pass the time as the days hospitalized dragged on. Six months after walking out of hospital on two steady legs, he gained first place in the IDF’s Colors in Rifle Barrels competition.
The competition runs annually under the auspices of the Association for the Wellbeing of Israel’s Soldiers and is designed to provide a platform for artworks created by members of the IDF, the Israel Police and the Border Police.
This year’s show took place last month at Beit Hahayal in Tel Aviv, and incorporated 81 paintings, sketches, photographs and sculptures, made by 47 serving artists that, says the IDF, offer “firsthand insight into the soldier experience.”
Wein admits that his painting avocation may have been boosted by some familial underpinning.
“My mother does some art and she’s an art therapist,” he says. “I guess, on her side, that art has been in the family for a bit.”
Even so, he had never taken art too seriously before his injury.
“I had doodled here and there, and done some drawing. But after the injury I had a lot of time and I just started with the art.”
He enjoys his creative explorations and says that painting has helped him work through some of his feelings following the war in Gaza.
“I believe that art, just like music, dance, opera, anything, is an expression of whoever is making it, even if they are not aware of that. So I guess art is an outlet for the emotions.”
Wein says, to begin with, he wasn’t particularly aware of the psychological benefits of getting into painting, but others observed an improvement in his emotional state and demeanor.
“When I was still in rehab it was a difficult time, and it was very frustrating for me back then. My brothers said that I was looking better, so I guess the painting must have been good for me back then.”
Painting as a means of creatively and healthily offloading anguish, pain and trauma is clearly a good way to heal emotional scars, but proffering the fruits of that process to the general public is, surely, another thing entirely.
“Yes it is very personal. I heard about the competition through the army magazine [Bamahaneh], there was an advertisement in there, and I thought ‘let’s try.’” Sounds deceptively simple enough.
“I went for this with an open mind.
I thought I’d submit the works and if they like it they like, and if they don’t that’s fine too.”
That’s a remarkably laid-back approach from a basically novice artist trying to get his first fruits out there.
AWIS chairman Avigdor Kahalani, who established Colors in Rifle Barrels, says he was keen to offer IDF members an outlet for their creative bent. “I wanted to allow the soldiers to express another aspect of themselves,” he explains. “There are soldiers who have all sorts of abilities which may not come out during the course of their regular army duties. There are soldiers who sing, play instruments and write and, of course, paint. You can’t take their natural abilities away from them.”
Kahalani says it took some effort to set the competition in motion, but that it is now up and running smoothly. “It has become an institution,” he notes with pride. “The competition allows soldiers like Daniel to show that the army is not just about what comes out of the rifle barrel. You mustn’t look at the world just down the barrel of a rifle, we [in the army] are a community.”
Kahalani, who left the army with the rank of brigadier-general in 1989, after 27 years’ service, has some insight on where Wein is coming from. He was one of the heroes of the Six Day War, during which he sustained serious wounds. Later, in the Yom Kippur War, was part of the team that held off the advance of over 400 Syrian tanks with a vastly smaller force. “I saw that Daniel’s wounded soul poured out through the colors and brushes he used, and that helped him to express deep emotion,” says Kahalani. “His choice of colors, and the faces he paints, which look sort out enraged, express a lot. Maybe, in 10 years’ time, he will paint differently.
I don’t know.”
Wein is nothing if not modest. The young man clearly has talent and the Colors in Rifle Barrels panel of judges, which included professionals from the Avni Institute of Art and Design in Tel Aviv, and IDF officials apparently thought so too. His first place prize includes a year’s scholarship to the Avni Institute, which he will probably take up next year.
While his mother may have provided some genetic encouragement for her son’s creative interest, the youngster says she did not play the archetypal Jewish mother role.
“She doesn’t analyze my stuff, and she didn’t push me into it. I thought about me starting to paint and draw.”
It proved to be a good, and natural, choice.
“I started buying canvases and paint, and it just took off from there,” he says, adding that he was quickly up and running.
“I really got into it, and now I am very serious about it.”
Wein may be blessed with artistic talent, but he knows he has a long road to travel on the way to honing his innate skills.
“I am learning,” he says. “I am getting there.”
Judging by the dramatic-looking works he showed me when we met in Tel Aviv, he has a pretty clear vision of how to go about translating his ideas and feelings into visual form. The paintings are infused with vibrant colors and bold strokes, and give the impression of an artist who knows what he wants to convey. These may be early efforts, but he seems to know what he is on about. There is nothing furtive or hesitant about the works. He cites celebrated French painter Françoise Nielly as a source of inspiration, and the parallels between their styles are plain to see.
Like Nielly, Wein tends to focus on portraits, although he says he has done “a couple of landscapes.”
Wein says he is not drawn to abstract painting and, for now at least, prefers to feed off more traditional approaches.
“I tried one or two abstracts. There’s all this modern art. You can interpret it in so many different ways. You can basically do whatever you want. I still don’t know my style.”
While he comes across as a relaxed character, he does admit to being moved by the last month’s opening proceedings.
“It was exciting. It was quite a shock to see my paintings hung on a nice wall, with everything looking so professional.”
But he survived the exposure in one piece, and came out of the exhibition experience with his confidence suitably bolstered.
“I wanted to hang around near my paintings and to ask people what they thought of them without them knowing I was the artist,” he says.
Unfortunately, that ruse was preempted when Wein was called up to the stage to receive his prize.
“People there knew I was the artist, but I still got a lot of positive feedback.
But I was very surprised I won the competition.”
On a practical level, the most significant upshot of his success in the competition is the scholarship he won for the Avni Institute.
“I’m going to take that up and see where it takes me,” he says.