{"id":19987,"date":"2025-07-30T01:01:02","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T01:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/?p=19987"},"modified":"2025-07-30T01:03:47","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T01:03:47","slug":"aliza-thomas-layers-of-life-layers-of-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/?p=19987","title":{"rendered":"Aliza Thomas: Layers of Life, Layers of Art"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Aliza Thomas<\/a>, an artist living in the Netherlands, was born and raised in Israel. Her life\u2019s path reflects the quiet depth that comes from years of exploration\u2014both creative and personal. She is a visual artist and papermaker, but that\u2019s just one layer. Thomas is also a devoted teacher, both in art and in practices like Qigong and Taijiquan, disciplines that emphasize balance, flow, and presence. Her daily life is deeply rooted in family, as a mother of three and grandmother to three more. These roles don’t compete\u2014they complement. Thomas brings the same attentiveness to her teaching and art as she does to her family. Each facet of her life feeds into the next. Her work is tactile, personal, and process-based, often involving reused or repurposed materials. The result is an artistic voice that feels lived-in and grounded, with a philosophy that leans into quiet resilience, renewal, and awareness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Swimming in 2030<\/strong> is one of those pieces that sits with you differently each time you return to it. Created on paper\u2014measuring 97 by 70 centimeters\u2014Thomas uses paint and her own handmade paper to construct a work that speaks to transition, impermanence, and something like cautious hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a loose sense of narrative to the piece, but it\u2019s more about experience than story. The viewer isn\u2019t told what to see; instead, they\u2019re invited to feel it. She describes the work as reflecting \u201cthe change the world is experiencing\u201d\u2014a transformation not just of environment or technology, but of perception. In her view, even \u201cshapes, forms, colors, and odors\u201d are shifting. This isn\u2019t nostalgia for what\u2019s been lost; it\u2019s an attentive eye on what is becoming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomas doesn’t offer easy answers. The painting feels like a space between things\u2014between past and future, chaos and renewal. The title, Swimming in 2030<\/em>, places us just far enough ahead that the scene feels speculative but not fantastical. It echoes today, only with a different rhythm. The artwork plays with abstraction in a way that resists closure. You can sense movement in the composition\u2014soft waves, scattered forms, a tension between dissolution and assembly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what grounds it is the tone of the accompanying words. Thomas writes as though guiding us into this moment: \u201cTiptoe in no one’s land, make your heart like a shiny lake mirroring sun and moon with great depths of kindness.\u201d It\u2019s poetic, but direct. The painting and the writing together offer a quiet resistance to panic. Instead of despair, Thomas offers presence. Instead of control, she invites surrender\u2014to observation, to transformation, to kindness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a world where environmental, political, and technological upheavals shape how we live and relate, Thomas\u2019s work serves as a gentle nudge toward balance. Her practice of Qigong and Taijiquan shows up not in the imagery, but in the way the piece breathes. There\u2019s no rigidity. Her choice of paper\u2014a medium she creates herself\u2014speaks to patience and texture. This is not mass-produced art. It\u2019s slow, layered, and intentional. Even the paper holds meaning: she often reuses old works, giving them new life in altered forms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomas’s use of handmade paper as a foundation isn\u2019t just a technical detail\u2014it\u2019s part of the work\u2019s philosophy. Paper is fragile but adaptable. It records every pressure, every mark, every layer. Like skin. Like memory. Her approach\u2014rooted in re-use\u2014adds depth to the notion of transformation. What was once discarded or overlooked becomes something worth seeing again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The imagery in Swimming in 2030<\/em> doesn\u2019t demand interpretation. You don\u2019t need to decode it. You just need to sit with it for a while. The visual elements\u2014fluid, sometimes fragmented\u2014mirror the emotional tone of her writing. Both suggest that we\u2019re not in control of this shift, but we can choose how we move through it. Thomas\u2019s invitation is to move with care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The world she hints at isn\u2019t utopian or dystopian. It\u2019s open. That\u2019s what makes her work feel current. In an age of hyper-definition and digital overload, Thomas slows things down. She encourages a return to texture, breath, and quiet attention. Her work doesn\u2019t shout. It doesn\u2019t warn. It hums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And perhaps that\u2019s what makes Swimming in 2030<\/em> resonate. It isn\u2019t about predicting the future. It\u2019s about being ready to meet it\u2014with heart, with humility, and with the kind of grace that comes from having walked a long path already. Thomas isn\u2019t interested in spectacle. She\u2019s interested in the unseen, the layered, the tender\u2014and how we might carry those qualities with us, even as the world around us keeps changing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aliza Thomas, an artist living in the Netherlands, was born and raised in Israel. Her life\u2019s path reflects the quiet depth that comes from years of exploration\u2014both creative and personal. She is a visual artist and papermaker, but that\u2019s just one layer. Thomas is also a devoted teacher, both in art and in practices like<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19988,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-19987","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artist"},"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19987"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19993,"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19987\/revisions\/19993"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}