Although [YEHEZKEL STREICHMAN] has been described as a colorist who mixes and "cooks" color; and while his typical canvases consist of layer upon layer of paint painstakingly brushed onto a linear infrastructure, a large number of his oils are treated quite differently, being given delicate, watercolor-like textures (see the 1990 diptych Tefen). In some instances Streichman exploits the classical attributes of watercolor painting - immediacy, transparency, luminosity - as in Hill at Tarshika, but, just as often, he employs waterpaints like oils, producing heavy saturated effects, roughening textures by adding sand and crayon and, on occasion, even ripping off strips of paper (see Landscape with Olive Trees in Galilee, 1988).

One or two paintings on view (like Forms in Ochre) date from the early '60s and are completely abstract; but by the '70s (as in The Red Sea and High Sky) reductive references to nature have surfaced as islands of interest dotted among broad abstract passages. Even during these decades, his (still-ongoing) portrait-series of his wife Tzilla never ceased. In fact, the earliest on view, Tzilla in Red, dating from the '60s, harks back to expressive figures painted by Streichman in the late '30s, when he was strongly influenced by Chaim Soutine. Full figurative images, ranging from a stately olive tree and a still life of a single potted hyacinth, to classical nudes, perhaps inspired by Claude Poussin's nymphs, make their appearance in paintings from 1986 onwards.