We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Yoram Gal. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Yoram below.
Yoram, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?
I have been an artist all my life. I almost studied psychology but chose theater and cinema at University. It was a huge joy to do my first painting at age 12. Since then, despite high hurdles and countless hardships – financial, struggle for recognition, terrible critiques – I have been feeling happier every day since that age 12 first painting. I am now feeling I am the happiest man on earth. I do what I want and love, paint, write what I want and love. The story is: At age 12, to overcome intense pain of soul, anger, frustration and stress, fears and nightmares, I was sent to the Anna Freud Clinic in London, England, where a marvelous therapist, Dr. Koch, treated me a Freudian child therapy for 3 intense years and immediately I began to paint, then write, and for the next 59 years this has been the source of healthy joy, relief, therapy that kept me growing and growing. One small seed was sowed and it is still growing daily.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Since I began painting at the beginning of my teen age years, I felt my life had a mission: to heal the world. I now know that this motivation to heal “all the people on earth” was actually a determined strive to heal myself. But consciously, all I ever work to do, is create paintings, plays, scripts, stories that cure the pained souls of the audience. To give them catharsis – to stimulate their souls to allow toxic stuff in their souls to rise to the surface and then be spilled out. This healing through exposure to art, this excretion of poison which collects at the bottom of our souls daily, this bringing the people to recognize and then expel their deepest fears, anxieties, toxins out of their systems, is my underlying chief goal. Entertainment is a side effect of this healing-through-art. I feel huge pride when people tell me again and again, after buying a painting of mine, many years later, how happy it makes them every morning to wake up and see that painting on the wall in front of their bed. How much pleasure, mixed with elation and joy the painting brings them. Or when I used to also be an actor, the spectators coming after the show with wet eyes of cathartic elevated spirits and iterate their thanks, their joy, their shock, their therapeutic and artistic high level experience.
The drive to heal myself and the world and make it healthy, peaceful, loving, is a great simple motivational force that keeps me going every day, every hour in which I have strength to write a new scene, to paint a new painting.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I was an actor – writer – director – producer – designer in theater and also in film and TV. 25 years this was my life. I also painted and exhibited throughout this period. From age 25 to age 50. Towards the end of that quarter of a century, I wrote and directed a feature movie “WILD” which my then wife Nili produced. We funded it ourselves, as there was no money in public grants in 1999. The movie got great reviews and was invited to a dozen international film festivals, even won first place for independent movies in Picciano Italy, a small alternative festival. But it tanked in the Box Office. It put us into huge dept. Inflation was 38% then in Israel. Suicide bombers killed 1000 Israeli civilians, wounded 10,000, the economy collapsed. Our debt sky rocketed. My son was born. The bank stopped us from using our credit cards or check books. We were at our wits’ end. Someone suggested I go to America and sell my paintings. I had to literally beg the bank manager for one last loan: ”$5,000” for airline tickets and more to go to New York and do art shows. Upon arrival in America my paintings – thank God – became a hit overnight. Literally. The first one month trip yielded $22,000 in sales. From November 2002 I have enjoyed enormous success selling my paintings world wide, and especially in America. The crazy “suicidal” deed of making an independent feature film with our own mortgaged house money turned to be a brave risk taking which paid off and gave me – so far – 21 years of joy and success, painting and selling my work.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
Freedom !!!! HAPPINESS IS FREEDOM
In “WAITING FOR GODOT” by Samuel Beckett, Pozzo and Luckey are the master and slave, connected forever by the rope which Pozzo holds and pulls… it is noosed around Luckey’s neck. The master is a slave to his slave no less than the slave is a slave to him.
This parable about the human condition seems as if to apply to all of us humans. There is seemingly no freedom. We are slaves to our addictions, our spouses, our habits, our livelihood, our society and its rules, some of us are slaves to their religion, wine, sex, work, money…
But lo and behold, we artists, are NOT slaves. We choose every morning what to do. What to invent. Where to try and sell. Whether to even sell. Where to live. Which religion to follow or none. We have no tethers – ropes that tie us down.
I thank God every day a few times a day for giving me something which enables me to be an artist, a free spirit, a free human. Really free.
People walking the art shows in America or visiting my studio in Old Jaffa, Israel, often comment with a twist of envy, but a warm heartedly spoken envy, “You are free. You are lucky. You wake up and paint whatever you like. You make a living from it. And you heal your soul through it. How I envy you.”
I reply: “Yes, you have a right to envy me. I live freedom. I breathe freedom. I did pay an enormous price already, I had to say no to many options in life, in order to preserve my freedom. I had to live on very little money for many years, and had a long road of searching, struggling, making decisions of integrity versus fame, money, comforts. The truth took a toll. But yes, happiness is freedom, and freedom is true happiness. Nothing stands next to freedom, except love.”
Sometimes we get a huge blow on the head. We sell nothing for weeks. We lose our exhibit in a storm. We need a shoulder replacement. We run out of stamina, we run out of ideas. This tough life of freedom and very hard physical work can be grueling, and bring you humbly down on your knees. Once in a storm in Houston my paintings got soaked in the fierce rain and many were destroyed. I cried like a baby. But the freedom quickly picked me up and set me on the road with a singing heart.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://yoramgal.com/
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/yoramgalart/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yoramgalart/
- Linkedin: gal.yoram25@gmail.com
- Twitter: @yoramgal
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY6ejqQyJANJ-QrABB4OJCA
Image Credits
all photos of paintings and of me are done by me Yoram Gal.