East Hampton - This past Saturday, artist, writer, and musician Haim Mizrahi held the opening reception for his exhibit, "Begetting." The exhibit featured examples of all the mediums Mizrahi engages in - from a book of his poetry and one of his recent C.D.'s - Mizrahi is an accomplished drummer, treating guests on opening night to an improvised drum performance with Dan Bailey, Ken Sacks and Nate Best - and a selection of his paintings. The solo show was held for two days at Ashawagh Hall this past weekend.

The work on display that night ranged from subtlety textured abstract paintings on canvas to more three dimensional works consisting of paint applied to individual wooden squares of different height in thickly layered globules. In his mixed media work "Delivery," Mizrahi makes interesting use of texture on two different levels - firstly the piece was painted on a series of six by six square blocks of varying heights arranged together into a large panel creating a stepped effect, which when coupled with his application of paint in thick ribbons, daubs and drips creates a three-dimensional perspective very different from more linear pieces on a single sheet of canvas.

Other pieces like "A Smile Behind The Screan," incorporated items like paint brushes and jars, and drumsticks, two tools that are clearly central to Mizrahi's art. In talking with Mizrahi about this fact, he pointed out that he had also hidden letters of the alphabet throughout the work, thus truly encapsulating all of the extensions of his artistic endeavors in one piece of art.

Haim Mizrahi, Ken Sacks, Dan Bailey and Nate Best performed in the drum session during opening night.

When he's not painting, writing or playing music, Mizrahi works as a house painter, a fact which he explains plays a central role in the very functional and hand-crafted nature of his art. "When I paint I don't think about style, I think about work and putting in technique without worrying about the process," he said. "I utilize commercial ingredients because I was a house painter for 30 years so my use of the materials is actual 'work' to create a work of art."

By gluing and cutting pieces of wood and canvas to create some of the surfaces he paints on represents a combination of manual work like carpentry, for example, on top of which he creates his art so when he speaks of the work he does so with a laborer or craftsman sense, as well an artist.

"We all come from a background, we don't come from chaos," Mizrahi related, explaining how his background painting houses has influenced his art. "When I paint I treat it like a job and I jump directly into my work, I don't waste any time. I just do it and trust my eye for color, and that I have some talent and I just go from there."