From: “Song of Songs” – Aharon April, exhibition catalog with an introduction by Felix Roziner (Jerusalem – Tel Aviv, 1982)

When the light is plentiful, strong and persistent, as it is here, in this land, it seems that you see nothing but it — light, light, light. Under omnipotence of light the very saturation of objects becomes questionable. And when the painter surrenders to the power of this all-devouring light — forms disappear. Thus are created formless paintings. There are many such paintings in Israeli galleries.
Other painters resist. They flee from the seduction of the light, and, groping for the slipping images, painstakingly copy reality. Thus are created paintings without light. Such paintings, too, are many in Israeli galleries.
Under such light, which drowns all and everything, it is difficult for a painter to conquer reality. There is Florentine school of painting; there is Venetian school. There is Parisian impressionism. But can you imagine a Jerusalem School? Among such stones? Under such light? Without a millennium of tradition?

Through the minor keyed “no” one can discern a more encouraging “yes”, when one looks at the paintings of Aharon April. One by one. They were painted here, in Jerusalem, during the past few years. The painter emerged victorious out of his struggle with the light. He did not surrender to it. Nor did he exile it from his paintings. He stole it from heaven and placed it in the depths of his canvases and papers.
Contained within the perfect lines of the contour, the lovely feminine forms are lit by this inner light, dissolved in the transparent watercolour. Is the light in the air behind the window and the twilight of the interior, and at night, when, seemingly, this saturation of light should have vanished, it continues to live in a beautiful profile of a girl, on the naked bodies of lovers. It shimmers and vibrates near that elusive brink when again and again we hear the nightingale sing in a Shakespearean sonnet or in a line of the Song of Songs: “…Looketh forth as the dawn, fair as the moon, clear as the sun…” (6:10).
In this vibration of light, which quivers in an endeavour to flow out of the frame, lies the special charm of the paintings of Aharon April.
The sculptural statuarity of his large figurative canvases, filled with the tension of light, suddenly begin to be felt as a movement, as an instability, as a question — the answer to which is concealed in the very mysteries of art.
One of the mysteries of April’s art is, perhaps, his talent to improvise. When I say “improvisation” I do not mean something chance, something at random and unrealised, — but a process which lives and creates in the consciousness of the artist, observed and controlled by him.
Choosing his theme (a model standing before a mirror; sitting by the steps of a staircase; at a window; under a tree; in a room), Aharon April begins to freely improvise. Out of the emerging painterly images he chooses those which will later comprise a series of paintings. When the choice is completed and we see the result, it already does not contain an element of chance. Here, like in Bach’s fugue, we witness a strict and a precise structure in its development.
May I be forgiven for this courageous analogy, but I cannot accept the triptych, “The Locked Garden — My Sister” (Song of Songs 4:12) otherwise than as an uninterrupted development of the three “voices”: colour, line and the compositional equilibrium of the figure — a development advancing from the first part of the tetraptych to its last.
The colour: from the ash-blue, silvery – moonlike (“night”) — to the strong ochre and gold (the tense daylight) — to the softened ochre-reds (“evening” – sensuous) — to charcoal absence of light (chill, nothingness, end).
The line: the changing of the foreshortening in which the figure is seen, leading to the frontal view in the final painting.
Composition: a figure moved to the left of the canvas, then closer to the center, then another push to the right and finally the return to the static center.
This is how one can try and approximately analyse the “polyphony” of this series, which, in the beginning, seems to be a free variation of the same subject, but later reveals its carefully planned harmony, entirety and completeness.
Aharon April is in full command of a whole arsenal of professional weapons. It is difficult to choose between his watercolours — from etudes to full sheets — and his oils; or between his painting and graphics.
Basically leaning towards figurative art, he makes an easy turn into the “abstract” (especially in his watercolours) and often combines the two in one. He does it with a precise tact of an artist and with a sure feeling for genre. This feeling (so badly needed not only in music and literature alone) is a rare quality amongst the painters. Aharon April has a full measure of it.
How can a painting embody the Biblical verse: “…and my heart was moved for him” (Song of Songs 5:4)? Just as words are obsolete in expressing a strong feeling, so is the line in April’s works outlives itself, and the forms dissolve in the hue, and there only remains, at times, a charcoal mark, looking through the painting like a hint, like a sign of the vanished word — figure.
For many reasons one may contend that April’s art is not limited by the painterly aspect of his creativity. In his works one can clearly see his aspiration to combine plastic aspects of painting (static by nature) with dynamics, i.e. to cross the borders of plastic arts. The viewer who enters his world is offered by the painter a certain special “being” — in time, flowing in tension, fullness and concentration. In this deep emotional colouring of the “time flow” of April’s paintings consists still another secret of his art.
This art expects not only a sensual echo from the viewer. He needs a viewer able not only to see, but also to lead what he sees into his cultural experience, in conjunction not only with painting, but also with poetry and music, and — let us add — with the life which surrounds the painter here, in Jerusalem. Such a viewer, whom the artist seeks, and the artist sought by such a viewer — will find and understand each other.

Song – Lying 2005