“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
- Oscar Wilde
Why hello there! Come in, come in, welcome to my personal wonderland of quirkiness and magic.
I’m Naama, the human behind Peculiaris (there are two cats too, mostly in charge of making sure I remember to play – with them – and take naps – with them, I do the rest of the work).
I’ve been making things and telling stories since I can remember. As a kid I learned ceramics, crochet, weaving. As a teen I took photography and oil painting classes. I continued with photography in a specialized art college and then decided I needed some art theory so I went to uni. Double majors are the mainstream in TAU, so I also took East Asian studies and fell in love with Japanese art.
That love grew to several more years in uni and a PhD in the history and art of Japan. On the way, I spent two years in Tokyo and five in London and, although my main focus was whatever degree I was in the middle of, I never stopped making. In fact, my studies and my stay abroad made it possible for me to do so much more: I learned to make traditional Japanese paper and tried my brush in calligraphy, I took classes with Tim Holtz and Dyan Reaveley in Harrogate. When I finished my degree, I came back home to Israel, where I finally took the final leap to becoming an artist (i.e. actually calling myself an artist, I’ve already done everything else).
I was always of the multidisciplinary types (I’m greedy that way), in my interests, studies and my art. So it’s not exactly surprising that I found my way to mixed media. I take it in the widest definition I can, and always find new materials and techniques to incorporate. It’s an adventure, and what’s life without some adventure?