Maya Bloch (b. 1978, Be’er Sheva) is an Israeli painter who lives and works in Tel Aviv. A largely self-taught artist, she holds both a BA and an MA in art history from Tel Aviv University. This deep familiarity with painting’s history informs a highly intuitive and psychologically charged practice.

Bloch often begins with anonymous family photographs, transforming their figures through thin washes of paint, graphite and layered color. Faces blur, bodies dissolve and familiar gatherings become dreamlike, emotionally ambiguous scenes. Hovering between figuration and abstraction, her ghostly subjects appear to emerge from and disappear back into the painted surface. The resulting works combine intimacy, melancholy and subtle dark humor, turning ordinary human relationships into encounters with memory and the unconscious.

Bloch has presented solo exhibitions at the Haifa Museum of Art, Thierry Goldberg Gallery in New York, Galerie Guido W. Baudach in Berlin and the Jerusalem Artists’ House. Her work has also been exhibited at P·P·O·W, Marlborough Gallery, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the American University Museum in Washington, D.C.