If there is one quality that embodies my life it is that I constantly struggle with ideas, values, beliefs and practices that appear to be so obviously paradoxical to others. I consider myself to be an Orthodox Jew and a Feminist, and in so doing I struggle with melding a patriarchal 3,000-year old tradition with a 21st-century Feminist perspective. These tensions imbue my paintings and drawings with deeply personal meanings. In them, I explore my religious and philosophical questions and ideas, often inspired by texts that I’ve read. The Upstream paintings evokes these struggles. The artwork is based on a story found in the Talmud in which a bird is shown to be kosher if it is swimming upstream. I loved the notion of the tradition heralding the animal for having the strength to go against the current.