In Varda Breger’s Migratory Birds, dark wings stretch across washes of orange and pale blue. The eye follows their movement through the paper, while handwritten words draw us closer. Painting and poetry share the same space, giving the work the intimacy of a thought expressed in both image and language.
That meeting feels central to Varda’s creative voice. Through mixed media and poems written in Hebrew and English, she explores our relationship with the Earth and with one another. Her concern reaches from wildlife facing extinction to the experiences of women, the violence of war and the possibility of peace.
A Deep Affection for Life
“Civilization ignores the elegies of Mother EARTH,” Varda writes. There is grief in those words, and a profound attachment to the life she sees threatened.
Working primarily with acrylic on paper, she describes spontaneous streams of paint surrounding a blurred deer, interrupted by the impression of a shoe or car tire. The presence of these human marks makes the animal’s vulnerability especially poignant. Elsewhere in her practice, the depiction of an abused nude woman brings her attention to human suffering.
These subjects reveal the depth of her concern. An animal’s fragile existence and a woman’s vulnerability belong within the same understanding of life: each deserves our attention and care. Through the movement of paint and the force of her imagery, Varda gives these concerns a presence we can encounter personally.
Her work invites us to linger—to recognize the living being within the image and consider our own relationship with it.
Following the Birds Toward Peace
The return of migrating birds to the revived Hula Lake inspired Varda’s poem FOLLY WARS. Traveling north and south, season after season, its birds move across millions of miles.
“Fraternity of feathers caressing the planet.”
The tenderness of this line opens the heart of her vision. Through the birds’ journeys, Varda imagines a fellowship extending across the Earth, beyond flags and borders. Their seasonal movement becomes a way to bring her love for the natural world into conversation with her longing for peace.
In Migratory Birds, that conversation takes a particularly personal form. Dark, extended wings move through flowing color, while handwritten poetry becomes part of the painting itself. We can follow the birds with our eyes and pause over the words beneath them. Each encounter offers another way into the artist’s concerns.
A Voice That Keeps Reaching
Varda’s education includes an MSc in Chemistry from Tel Aviv University and a BSc from Technion, Israel. Alongside this scientific background, painting and poetry give her ways to express her concern for our vulnerable planet.
At almost ninety, she describes the threat of nuclear weapons and the violence of wars in Israel and elsewhere as forces that drive her to act for peace through her creative tools. Her commitment carries a deeply human urgency: the desire to protect life remains present in the words and images she creates.
“I believe that all the planet’s inhabitants are part of a chain, linked together,” she writes.
That belief brings her many subjects into a shared embrace. Wildlife, women, humanity and the Earth are connected within her vision. To care for one is to become more attentive to the others.
Within Artists Defining a New Era, Varda’s paintings and poems offer an encounter with this enduring compassion. Her birds carry our gaze across the paper; her words bring us back to the home we share, and to the life entrusted to our care.
Contact the artist: vbreger.com
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