Rachel Kainy Transforms Jerusalem Streets into Artistic Scrolls Through Innovative Walking Drawings

Rachel Kainy, born in 1981 in Kibbutz Nahshon, is an Israeli artist and art educator celebrated for her watercolor paintings and recent urban walking drawings. A recipient of the 2024 Plumas Art Foundation grant, her work is showcased in institutions such as The Israel Museum, Jerusalem Artists House, and Tel Aviv’s Rosenfeld Gallery.

Graduating from Hamidrasha School of Art with a Bachelor of Education in Fine Arts in 2008, Kainy merges her kibbutz upbringing with Jerusalem’s vibrant cityscape. Her 11-year residency in the Holy City has inspired her to intertwine local history and contemporary life in her art.

Currently featured in the exhibition “Drift” at Art Cube Artists’ Studios, Jerusalem, her works explore urban dynamics until August 21.

Kainy’s innovative “Road Sketch” project, developed with artist Itamar Mendes-Flohr, uses a portable drawing harness to create elongated scrolls while walking. This method, inspired by Kabbalistic principles from the Zohar, allows dual-hand engagement, capturing Jerusalem’s cultural contrasts through continuous, flowing lines.

Growing up in a kibbutz children’s home without a private room, Kainy found solace in drawing, carrying a sketchbook as her personal sanctuary. During the pandemic, she began sketching with both hands, a practice fostering mindfulness and dynamic artistic exploration.

Wearing the Star of David openly, Kainy navigates Jerusalem’s diverse neighborhoods, documenting its social tapestry through immersive street-level narratives.

When asked about her craft, Kainy explained that her shift to public drawing emerged from a desire to document the city’s “social and cultural shades and contrasts.” She views each scroll as a “megillah” of Jerusalem, echoing the tradition of symbolic scrolls like Megillat Esther.

In September 2020, Kainy rediscovered her artistic identity during the “STILL WATERS into Living Colors” exhibition at Brigham Young University, where her watercolors represented conflicts between nature and culture. Despite lifelong drawing habits, she had never exhibited sketches until now.

Her kibbutz childhood shaped her artistic lens: limited parental contact and shared living spaces forged her reliance on art as escapism. Her parents—an art curator and an architect—unknowingly cultivated her creative instincts.

Kainy’s watercolor mastery emerged accidentally. Struggling with acrylics and oils during her second year of study, she discovered a former kibbutz art teacher’s watercolor kit. His mentorship redirected her toward fluid, expressive techniques.

Embracing the Zohar’s concept of duality (judgment and mercy), she began sketching with both hands, creating the “Road Sketch” scrolls. This technique symbolizes connection between physical and spiritual realms, mirroring the “root and branches” axiom of Kabbalah.

Using a modified baby carrier as her initial drafting tool, Kainy later collaborated with Mendes-Flohr on the portable harness, enabling mile-long walks that produce works measuring up to seven meters.

Her exhibitions fuse urban narratives with personal history. The recent “Drift” show merges aquarelles inspired by the book *The Art of the Ancient World* with fragments of 1976 love letters embedded in studio materials. One unopened letter collection from 1976 prompted a series merging romantic history with contemporary artistic practice.

As Kainy states, “It’s always about connecting to existence through art.” Whether through watercolor’s meditative fluidity or dual-handed sketches that bridge eras, her work embodies Jerusalem’s evolving story—one deliberate step, one scroll at a time.

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