“Imagine a little girl with a red dress and red bows somewhere in Kishinev, Moldova. A polite, hardworking and serious girl reading books day and night, playing piano, and doing everything in order to please her parents.”
That’s the picture Israeli artist Anna Epstein Aiach paints of her childhood in the Soviet Union, from her current vantage point as a 51-year-old mother.
“This girl still exists in me – sometimes she calms me down and, more often than not, influences the choice of my life goals,” she continues.
“But there is another character trait trying to break out: creativity with burning love for colors, aesthetics, and life itself. This is Anna the painter.”
At 17, she graduated from high school and planned to study medicine because the therapeutic professions always attracted her.
But her father, a software engineer and “one of the most intelligent people I know, never saw a future for his family and especially for me and my brother in the Soviet Union, and always dreamed of making aliyah.”
In May 1989, with the beginning of the restructuring of the political and economic systems of the Soviet Union (perestroika), the family came to Israel. Anna arrived with her nuclear family, her grandparents, and her beloved uncle and aunt with their children.
“We arrived straight to Netanya – a city where my mother’s cousins had lived with their families from the 1970s,” she relates.
That fall, she began mechina, a preparatory program for newcomers, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. There, she discovered her love for the Hebrew language and developed great pride in being Israeli.
“It wasn’t always easy, but for me Israel is a country that you have to prove you deserve to live in. My father’s advice not to idealize where I came from but to open my heart to the place I came to was very helpful. And also my natural optimism and curiosity and desire to succeed in whatever I choose.”
Anna earned a bachelor’s degree in Asian studies with a specialization in Japanese, combined with social work studies.
In her last year of university, she met her future husband, Jacob Aiach, a new immigrant from France who served in the Air Force as a paramedic in the Stinger Unit. They wed 30 years ago and have two children, Nathanael and Shaked.
After a few years in Jerusalem, they moved close to Anna’s parents in Netanya. She worked in the municipality’s welfare office for three years, and then earned a master’s degree in educational counseling at Tel Aviv University.
“Over the years, Tel Aviv University has become my second home. For more than 10 years, I have worked in the Faculty of Medicine as a clinical appointments committee coordinator. This is fascinating work with academically oriented doctors from all the hospitals affiliated with Tel Aviv University – doctors who, at the same time as being excellent clinicians, are engaged in research,” she says.
And what happened to Anna the painter?
“I have no formal education in art, but I took painting lessons in Israel. I painted in the studio of Israeli artist Nira Ben-Hur for three years,” she relates.
“This is the essence of my life. I paint about five hours a day, into the nights. Sometimes the routine causes my creativity to explode inside me, bringing out a tsunami of unstoppable restlessness, and I can’t stop painting.”
"Sometimes the routine causes my creativity to explode inside me, bringing out a tsunami of unstoppable restlessness, and I can’t stop painting."
Anna Epstein Aiach
She calls her abstract paintings “open windows to my soul.”
“In everyday life, I’m realistic. I follow the rules, obey the conventions. In my art, I cannot be bound... I hold on to the paintbrush and take off! Colorfulness, free movement, and harmony fill me up.”
Anna says the colors she uses change according to her mood at a particular moment. Combining colors in soft or hard brush strokes, she aims to invite the viewer to join her in soaking up the colors and situations depicted on the canvas.
“Since I started painting, I have created an artistic visual language that expresses what I have been looking for over many years,” she says. “I express my life with colors and how they are placed on the canvas, a way to reflect on the past and what lies ahead.”
Each artwork, she says, “represents a starting point for contemplating issues of existence, such as life’s essence and the individual’s purpose in the world. Usually, I don’t choose a subject or a composition in advance. I work from the gut.”
Anna has presented her paintings in solo and group exhibitions in Israel and around the world. Last year, she participated in exhibitions in Vienna and London.
Her next solo exhibition will be on display at the Frishman 46 gallery in Tel Aviv from January 1 through February 28. It includes four paintings in a series she did after Oct. 7.
“It was born as an expression of my soul that is in pain and looking for a way to recover” is how she describes this series.
Anna also sells her paintings online and works with architects and interior designers to add a dash of personal character and upgrades to clients’ homes.
“I am proud to share that my paintings hang in about 70 homes in Israel, and about five in France,” she says.
“For me, every painting is a part of my soul, and I share it with art lovers in general and my clients in particular.”