Tonight we're here with Roni Cohen, an Israeli artist who is telling friends about her new show at the Bank Leumi.
   Cohen, who moved to Los Angeles in1997, was a foreign press photographer during the 1973 war in the Golan and Sinai. An accident near the end of the war wrecked her leg and her camera and she want to study with Ran Schori at Bezalel Arts. She also studied in London and New York and began working in a variety of textures,showing at the Shafrai and Mabat Galleries in Israel.
    In 1991, her house on Rehov Bialik in Ramat Gan was rocketed by a Scud missile (she wasn't home,having escaped to Beer-Sheva). With a damaged life and broken heart, she painted through waves of despair and hope. Working in red and black, signifying drums and explosions of not only war but of new energy, she began expressing what she calls "emotional and industrial landscapes."
   Her show features abstract forms on large compressed felt rugs, acrylic and collage, and serigraphs and etchings of Jerusalem and Safed.
   "I know the soul is here," she says pointing to her head ."I have a new life now, new friendships, new ideas - new everthing."
   Cohen teaches early childhood education at Stephen S. Wise Temple, and has a son in high school in Agoura Hills. She has had 11 solo shows in Israel and California and is resident artist at the 825 Gallery on La Gienega Boulevard.
 

 
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"Old City" by Roni Cohen