The painting featured on this year’s Mother’ Day card is an original piece, entitled “Long Life,” generously donated by Israeli artist Betty Rubinstein.

Betty paints with oil, acrylic and aquarelle in a meticulously realistic style, inspired by the surrounding nature, tending from time to time to become abstract. Her paintings combine color and texture to create a rhythm of form and contents, and are influenced by great artists such as Paul Cezanne, Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet, and especially by the transparent light and strong energy that she feels in Israel. For many years, Betty sailed with her husband, learning local art in each country they visited.

Betty’s words:

"In my paintings, I am not exactly sketching the subject that I see. I paint what appears behind the husk of external form and show the essence of the matter. I try to capture the feeling, the very  aroma of such ephemeral things as the light and atmosphere of landscapes and the present of  something beautiful that only God can create. I want to motivate people whose daily lives are  enmeshed in complexities of the modern world, to stop for a moment, recall the purity and  gentleness of nature, and to enjoy the silence of it all.”

During the Second Lebanon War, Betty stayed in her home in Northern Israel. That experience  had a deep influence on her new paintings. The shrieking of the missiles and their impacts, a few yards from her home, brought about a change of priorities in her life. She is thankful for being  blessed with an ability to touch the hearts of people through paintings and art, and that these  paintings are a common language for many people.