1954 Born Chicago, IL.
1978 Began extensive travel in Central and South America.
1986 Co-founded Forest Island Project, an ecological restoration and cultural conservation project in alliance with local NGOs in Veracruz, Mexico.
1996 Co-founded health center in Bolinas, CA, dedicated to traditional medicine and support of traditional healers.
2011 Paul Mahder Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2011 LA Art Show, Los Angeles, CA
2008 Paul Mahder Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2006 Darnel Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM
2004 Darnel Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM
2004 Blue Room Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2003 Museo de Fundacion Guayasamin, Quito Ecuador
2003 Bolinas Museum, CA, Works from the Permanent Collection
1979 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Aesthetics of Graffiti
1978 Marianne Deson Gallery, Chicago, IL, Gallery Artists
1978 Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL, Fetish Myth and Legend
1978 Minnesota Museum of Art, Drawings USA, National Tour
1977 Diablo Valley College Art Gallery, Pleasant Hill, CA, Six Artists
1976 Walnut Creek Civic Arts Gallery, Walnut Creek, CA, Surfaces and Image
1975 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Fetishes
1974 Michael Wyman Gallery, Chicago, IL
1974 E. B. Crocker Art Gallery, Sacramento, CA
While his work draws upon and honors the contributions from Picasso, Miro and Chagall to Dubuffet, Olivera, and Chicago's Hairy Who,
His work is medicine. Crushed Alabaster, human and plant material, handmade paints, metallic substances and other medicinal elements mixed by Feldsott as part pharmacist/painter/shaman are used to awaken original memories of the viewer.
Layer upon layer of elaborate archetypical shapes elicit feelings and ideas on a grand scale, at once both ancient and futuristic. These symbols may or may not even be visible in the surface's final visage but each layer is important to the life, energy and story of the works and their subsequent power.
Yisrael Feldsott had many shows in the 1970s. He was the youngest artist ever to have several group exhibits at San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art, and the only student to receive a Master of Fine Arts from California College of Arts and Crafts (without having an undergraduate degree). He was an art prodigy on the fast track to success.But success, he quickly learned, did not come without its problems of artistic and personal restrictions from galleries, museums and art dealers.
Yisrael Feldsott became less interested in commercial success and felt compelled to understand and preserve the fragments of wisdom of the rich yet endangered ecologies and cultures of Central and South America. He founded an ecological restoration project, health care programs and cultural empowerment strategies and studied with indigenous people for over 25 years and he continued painting. He learned to become a cross-cultural ambassador, a student of traditional medicine, teacher, healer and most of all a storyteller.
When a museum in Ecuador offered him a retrospective in 2002, Feldsott reawakened to the importance of showing his work, “to interact with my culture, create discourse and dialogue so that all of us can find a more peaceful way to live.”
Bold shapes, dazzling colors and lines of heroic energy transport the viewer deeper into the spiritual realms of places and beings.