PURPLE LEAVES, RED CHERRIES
An award-winning gift book for new moms
Nomi Melul Ohad
Born into an artistic family, Nomi grew up learning painting from her father and a love of design from her mother, a dressmaker. By the age of five, Nomi had discovered the artistic potential of her mother’s pattern catalogs – happily attacking them with scissors and glue – and her love of collage began.
Nomi attended a high school for the arts where she spent joyous years exploring and experimenting with a variety of art forms. She always felt a passion for painting, but moving into adulthood, she found herself working as a designer and illustrator for a number of magazines and newspapers.
It was only when Nomi became a mother that she was able to truly free her creative spirit. The long hours of print design no longer suited her new life as a mom. Seeking work with flexible hours,
Nomi opened her own studio in 2000. At last she could return to painting and express the new emotional openness that she had discovered in herself since the birth of her first child.
Today Nomi combines painting, illustration and collage. Her primary source of inspiration is “all that is beautiful in this world” – anything from two wind-swept trees on the side of the road to a passage in a children’s book. In addition, many of her paintings reflect the complexity of relationships while her collages often display her nostalgic love of design from the 1950s.
As mother of two, Nomi takes great pleasure from watching her children explore art. In addition she loves bare plywood, old cars, cinema and anyone who offers her a wall to paint on.