I have always had difficulty with writing and with speech, thus I became a musician.  I had tried to tell my tales of love and friendship, and also those of my thoughts about philosophy and religion, and about collages, until the day I was introduced by Hedi Tarjan to Anatoly Basin. 
Every week, for several years now, we meet in Jerusalem's "Musrara" quarter, to paint under his guidance.  Gradually, my collage work was transformed into real paintings.  The "a-la-prima" method suited my natural tempo well, now devoted to the study of sound in both painting and drawing. 
I have listened to Anatoly's explanations with the ear of a musician and an  intuitive understanding allowed us to advance our communication with each other towards a language born of Hebrew.  We have created a kind of dictionary, containing phrases such as "meurav yerushalmi" (borrowing the name of a well-known local mixed grill dish), in order to expound on the way we mix the paint on the canvas, but also as a reference to our own various native tongues. 
It was this diversity, this mixture and its communicative difficulties that allowed us eventually to create, here in Jerusalem, a school of painting.  And in this way, through my own contacts with painters and musicians - eastern and western alike - I feel this was anticipated in everything that I have ever read and in my musical studies as well.  The trails blazed by the painters of "Musrara" now converge in one immediate act. 

Roger Ychai