The Blue and White Art Gallery

The Blue and White Art Gallery Original Jerusalem Art Gallery

We’re in the month of Adar and during the Ramadan fast in Israel right now.Both follow the moon.Adar leans toward joy.Ra...
24/02/2026

We’re in the month of Adar and during the Ramadan fast in Israel right now.

Both follow the moon.
Adar leans toward joy.
Ramadan leans toward restraint.
They’re very different in tone but they’re happening at the same time, in the same country.
No one presses pause on one so the other can take over. There isn’t one “official” atmosphere. They just overlap.

We’re used to choosing: celebration or seriousness.
But life doesn’t really work like that.

You can feel light and serious in the same week.
You can celebrate and still reflect.
You can be disciplined and still carry warmth.

This is what' beautiful about art too.
It doesn’t cancel contradictions.

You don’t have to choose between calm and tension. You can have both energies in the same frame because that's how real life, people and nature work.

A quiet street can still feel alive.
A calm see can still feel powerful.
If you remove one side completely, the image can become flat and feel shallow.

Not long ago, millions celebrated the Lunar New Year in China, which is also guided by the moon.

It’s interesting how one moon can shape so many rhythms at once.

Wishing everyone a joyful Adar.
A meaningful and peaceful Ramadan.
And a strong, fortunate Year of the Horse

On Dec 16, 1773, tea falling into the ocean became a symbol of people saying,“This is our line in the sand.” And this ye...
12/12/2025

On Dec 16, 1773, tea falling into the ocean became a symbol of people saying,
“This is our line in the sand.”

And this year, on that same date, we light Chanukah - a flame that became a symbol of standing for faith, values, and dignity.

History could’ve chosen anything.
But for Boston, it chose tea.
For Chanukah, it chose a flame.

Both tiny.
But both came to represent something much larger:
people standing up, protecting their identity, and refusing to be pushed aside.

The Maccabees fought a war.
Boston started a revolution.
But that’s not the part our minds hold onto.

Boston is remembered for tea in the harbor.
Chanukah is remembered for a flame that refused to go out.

Two simple symbols that outlived the battles behind them.
Two reminders that sometimes the smallest images carry the deepest meaning.

Udi's new painting reflects a similar idea. Jerusalem has plenty of history behind it, but in Udi's paintings the focus always settles on what lasts - the colors, the light, and the Western Wall.

If tea and a flame can outlive entire battles,
then maybe the simple things in our own days matter more than we think.
Wishing you a holiday season where the small things bring the most light.

Today marks eighty six years since Kristallnacht, the night when Jewish homes, shops, and synagogues in Germany were att...
09/11/2025

Today marks eighty six years since Kristallnacht, the night when Jewish homes, shops, and synagogues in Germany were attacked.

One of the young men arrested that night was Jacob Wiener, a 21 year old studying to become a teacher. He came home to find his mother murdered, and his brother taken to a concentration camp.
And yet, instead of turning away from life, he turned toward it.
He went on to open a Jewish school - something he managed to convince the Gestapo to allow. Later he became a rabbi and social worker, a man who rebuilt others after everything around him had been destroyed.

Tragedy doesn’t only break. It reveals.
Sometimes it forces us to see what we were meant to do all along, but had been too distracted, too cautious, or too busy to live for. Or it gives our plans a new meaning.

It doesn’t make suffering good or necessary. Tragedy doesn’t make us better, it doesn’t justify itself and become less evil. But if we let it shape us into builders, healers, creators, then it loses its power.

We don’t choose what breaks us. But we do choose what grows from the cracks.

Something Udi often talks about and hopes we all can do is when the world shakes around you and it shakes you too, don’t collapse. Be like the olive tree - still rooted, still giving olives.
If you’re a painter, don’t drop the brush. Let the storm change the colors, not take them away.
Like in this Tree of Life painting. The roots go deep, even when the world tries to shake the tree.

In the second painting, Jerusalem grows from its own ruins.The Western Wall stands from what was once destruction, and yet, life grew around it.
It became the foundation of everything that came after.
That’s what it means to build on the cracks.
You don’t hide the past. You grow from it.
Don’t let the storm uproot you.
Deepen your roots instead.

This time of year is about balance - in rain, in work, in life. In Israel, our prayers start to mention rain again. We d...
24/10/2025

This time of year is about balance - in rain, in work, in life. In Israel, our prayers start to mention rain again. We don’t ask for it yet. We just acknowledge it. Later, we start asking that it comes as a blessing and not destruction.

It’s a reminder that intentions matter - in what we pray for and in the things we build. Even good things need the right measure and intention.

This watercolor captures the season’s shift - softer, muted colors, colder tones, a slower mood, and quiter blessings.

Wishing peace and balance for everyone in this new season.

This pomegranate painting has been waiting patiently since before the pandemic, and only now Udi finally finished it. Ma...
17/10/2025

This pomegranate painting has been waiting patiently since before the pandemic, and only now Udi finally finished it. Maybe it’s a reminder that blessings, like paintings, don’t always appear on schedule, but they arrive in their own time.

Fittingly, just this month off Israel’s Carmel Coast, in the Dor Lagoon, also known as Tantura Lagoon, archaeologists uncovered ancient ship cargoes from the old port city of Dor.

Among them were storage jars, amphorae, iron blooms, metal goods, and even an anchor inscribed with Cypro Minoan script, each one adding another angle and layer to the story.

The finds date from the 11th to the 6th century BCE, spanning about five hundred years of Iron Age trade.
It’s the first discovery of its kind in this region, linking Dor to Cyprus and to the wider Mediterranean world.
All that time, they were right there, just unseen.

Now that the holidays have passed, may their light continue into the days ahead. Wishing everyone a year filled with peace, health, and countless blessings like the seeds of a pomegranate. May we not need years or archaeology to see what’s already here, and may we have the patience for the blessings that are still on their way.

All year long we spend our energy looking outward - politics, neighbors, crises, headlines, other people’s choices. We t...
30/09/2025

All year long we spend our energy looking outward -
politics, neighbors, crises, headlines, other people’s choices.
We track how the world is falling apart or fixing itself.
We look for what we love and for what we don't .
We measure how it all affects us, and we judge the world in return.

Yom Kippur turns the lens around.
It’s the day we stop pointing at the world and instead look in the mirror.

At first, that might sound selfish. In truth, it’s the most selfless thing we can do.
For one day, we stop dissecting everyone else and take responsibility for ourselves -
what we did this year that we’re proud of, what we want to do more of, what we need to do less of.
How we affect ourselves, the world and others.

Yom Kippur is not about shame. It’s about a reset.
To pause. To ask hard questions. To plan our steps more strategically.
Because when each of us improves, even slightly, the whole world shifts with us.

Udi’s painting of the Mishkan reminds us that the holiest place wasn’t about looking outward but inward. Yom Kippur asks us to find that inner room in ourselves. To pause there, reflect, and choose how to step into the year ahead.

A day that looks so inward ends up shaping the world outward.
The world doesn’t collapse if we stop watching it for 24 hours. It might even improve.
Wishing everyone a day of clarity and a year that feels a little brighter.

The pomegranate on Rosh Hashana is said to hold as many blessings as its seeds. May the year ahead bring you more sweetn...
22/09/2025

The pomegranate on Rosh Hashana is said to hold as many blessings as its seeds. May the year ahead bring you more sweetness, light, and peace than you can count. Shana Tova!

In Africa’s stubborn struggle between lions and spotted hyenas, the Disney Actors Guild chose to side with the hyenas an...
19/09/2025

In Africa’s stubborn struggle between lions and spotted hyenas, the Disney Actors Guild chose to side with the hyenas and boycott The Lion King (while promoting Pocahontas instead). As you can see in the painting, I stayed with the lions.

Jerusalem has felt quieter for a long time. Many shops stayed closed, and even now that most are open again, the tourist...
18/08/2025

Jerusalem has felt quieter for a long time. Many shops stayed closed, and even now that most are open again, the tourists haven’t fully returned. But people still keep their doors open. They still show up.

That’s part of Jerusalem’s character. The stones don’t change. The Kotel doesn’t change. What shifts is how we see it.

That’s the same way Udi paints it. Every painting of Jerusalem is another point of view. And this time it is painted on a round canvas instead of a square one. Not because the city changed, but because there’s always another way to see it. Another angle, another frame. The city hasn’t shifted, but how we look at it can.

And that’s true beyond Jerusalem. Daily life often feels repetitive: the same streets, the same routines, the same patterns. But often the difference is in the frame. A round canvas doesn’t change Jerusalem but it shifts the view. Our lives work the same way.

Tu B’Av comes right after Tisha B’Av, and that’s probably for a reason.Tisha B’Av shows what happens when we can’t build...
09/08/2025

Tu B’Av comes right after Tisha B’Av, and that’s probably for a reason.
Tisha B’Av shows what happens when we can’t build anything together because we’re too focused on our differences. We judge each other, we only value what we bring to the table, and anything that feels foreign gets pushed away. It’s a bit of that human tendency to only trust what looks like us, thinks like us, or acts like us.

Tu B’Av is about fixing that problem. And the first step is to look at people as a whole, not getting stuck on one “branch” that feels twisted or wrong to us, but actually seeing the entire person. Trying to understand them, appreciate them, and value the whole of who they are.

That’s how relationships get built. And at its core, Tu B’Av is about relationships. It’s the Jewish version of Valentine’s Day, but with a deeper focus on unity and connection, not just romance.

It shows in Udi's recent paintings- "Olive Trees at Night" and "Olive Tree and the Heavenly Jerusalem". Both are representations of the Tree of Life, rooted in the Bible. Same way we stay stronger in our relationships when they’ve got a firm base and when we don’t cut off the parts we don’t fully understand.

Wishing you a week of seeing people, including yourself as a whole, and knowing that every part belongs.

Stand two people in front of the same painting - they’ll see two different things.Color shifts. Shadows fall differently...
03/08/2025

Stand two people in front of the same painting -
they’ll see two different things.
Color shifts. Shadows fall differently.
Not because the painting changed, but because the viewer did.

And that’s not the problem.
It’s the beauty.

The Temple wasn’t built by people who all thought the same.
It was built with different skills, different views, different hands.

And it fell when we used those differences to tear each other down
by pulling out the stones that didn’t look like ours.

We’ve learned to fight ideas by fighting people.
To treat difference like danger.
To confuse unity with uniformity.

But shared ground doesn’t mean identical minds.
What we need isn’t agreement - it’s alignment.
The humility to hold our perspective while making space for someone else’s.

Some use bricks to build.
Others to break.
That choice still stands.

This week, Udi finished two new paintings of Jerusalem:
“Pilgrimage to Jerusalem” and “The Golden Gate Reopens.”
Because walking toward something bigger than ourselves
is still how anything gets built.

Tisha B’Av is a reminder:
The Temple didn’t fall because we were different.
It fell because we couldn’t stay in the room with difference.

Wishing you a week of building, not breaking.

Address

1 Cardo Street
Jerusalem
90000

Opening Hours

Monday 10:00 - 18:00
Tuesday 10:00 - 18:00
Wednesday 10:00 - 18:00
Thursday 10:00 - 18:00
Friday 09:30 - 13:00
Sunday 10:00 - 18:00

Telephone

02-6282233

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