Saturday, November 8, 2025
Marc Provisor, the director of security projects for the Hewlett-based One Israel Fund and a former soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, has been interpreting his war experiences on canvas, using watercolor and oil.
Provisor, 62, who now lives in Israel, started painting as a way to decompress when he was a 20-year-old IDF soldier fighting in the Lebanon War in 1983.
“When I came back after a particularly messy ambush that we were in in Lebanon, a friend of mine had given me a set of watercolors and watercolor paper,” Provisor recalled. “I was sitting in my apartment that night, and just started painting the incident. It calmed me down a lot.”
From then until the following year, Provisor painted each day after returning from combat. After his stint with the IDF, he came to the United States to continue his schooling. He initially studied marketing, but changed his major to art after attending an oil painting class at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.
“I totally fell in love with it, and decided to drop all of my business courses and started studying painting,” he said. “I just got into the art, and I was in New York, and would submit things for shows, and eventually it took off.”
After the war in Iraq began in 2002, Provisor left New York and moved back to Israel.
“I had a couple of art shows going on, but I simply picked up and just went back home,” he recounted. “Also in the hopes I would be able to continue to paint and be with art, but Israel is not New York.”
He painted less and less after he was appointed head of security in Shiloh, just north of Jerusalem, near the West Bank.
“I took the job because the mayor of Shiloh told me I could paint at night all the time, and offered me a studio for free,” he said. “He said it wouldn’t be many hours, and I’ll have plenty of time to paint.”
But Provisor soon realized that being security chief took more time than the mayor had suggested, and he didn’t have much time for painting.
“When the Intifada broke out, I started painting more of the terror attacks that I was involved in,” he said. “It was a way to release it and process it.” The second Intifada, which began in September 2000, was an uprising by Palestinians against Israel and its occupation of Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
He stopped painting in 2002, as a result of the influx of terror attacks he helped defend against. “I was involved in a lot of terror attacks, and I didn’t even want to paint what I was doing,” Provisor said. “There was one particular attack that was really nasty, and I said, ‘That’s it. I’m not painting anymore.’”
One Israel Fund, a nonprofit based in Hewlett, has been committed to the safety and well being of over 500,000 residents of Judea and Samaria — the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem — since 1994. Provisor is the director of security projects and oversees all the security initiatives for the residents in the West Bank.
Over a decade and a half later, in 2018, he started having flashbacks of the attacks, and decided to break out his paint and canvas and return to his art studio.
“I made a painting,” Provisor said. “It wasn’t the prettiest painting, but when I completed it, everything felt good.” His love for painting was reignited, and he became a full-time artist again.
“I still do some security things during the day, but most of my time is spent painting,” he said. “Painting is my happy place, and I can’t imagine not doing it. I’m always happy when I’m working on different canvases.”
“Marc’s art touches some dark corners and addresses hard topics about the security of our region,” Ophra Shoshtari, an Israel-based freelance art curator who works in the Judea and Samaria region, wrote in a WhatsApp message. “On the other hand, he also shows the beauty and physicality of the land.”
“Marc is a very interesting person,” Shoshtari added. “He is highly motivated and has an important message to share. I am very grateful to work with him on many projects.”
Provisor also works with Avivit Agam Dali, an Israeli art curator who promotes Israeli art and themes that engage the country’s artists. “I believe Marc’s works reflect the Israeli reality in a fascinating way,” Dali wrote on WhatsApp. “Especially the piece in which he depicts himself and his son, who escaped from the Nova (Music) Festival on Oct. 7, 2023.”
Dali added that Provisor’s art reflects the complexity of the Israeli reality. “Marc presents his perspective on the situation in the most personal and intimate way that a work of art can be,” she wrote.
