International Press:

“The paintings are reminiscent of Paulo Coelho’s novels – all insight and ecstatic states.  The strength of Hirsch as an artist is that she decoratively develops the surface and does not get scattered on narration.”
– DELO, Kiev, Ukraine

“The artist becomes the apologist and the defender of the environment – the ecological artist…She uses a microscope to create her works and examines in detail the oak bark, a lotus flower or a wheat–ear and then she extracts those miracles from nature.
– KOMMERSANT, Kiev, Ukraine

“Mysterious art…mystic requires a state of unusual concentration.   It is clearly seen in the paintings of the American artist – they are in direct touch with the mysterious order of the universe”
– Dziennik, Krakow, Poland

U.S. Reviews:

“Vining, twining forms pull apart to reveal seed pods and womb-like configurations ...(Her) new work is subtler and richer ...growing and changing ...to explore pulsating growth in nature ...strong composition, teeming with fruit, flowers and tentacles. - LOS ANGELES TIMES

"Her large heavily painted canvases relate occasionally to the disjointed visions of James Rosenquist The quality of the painting itself — dense and earthy …impressed me the most.”
- ART NEWS

"Her drawing skill is proven in a graphic mandala …The most unusual and promising of Hirsch's images is in a painting on paper, Dorland Suite #4 where a triangular form hovers above the reeds of a lake, formally and symbolically establishing a perfect equilibrium between universally experienced abstract spiritual essence and personally encountered material landscape.” - ARTWEEK

"Subtler ...is the idea put forth in Gilah Hirsch's “Addiction to Conflict Between the Universal and the Human Embrace.” The title alludes to the endless friction between self-gratification and global consciousness, while the image portrays a couple in sexual embrace intersected with a heroic elk's head. In this paradoxical image, I as in too few of the other rough hewn concepts on display, the artist examines sinister causes of addictive tendencies rather than the ugly, sinister manifestations thereof”
- LOS ANGELES TIMES

“For viewers who prefer social messages in subtler form, such artists as Gilah Hirsch offer relief from the predominantly literal works.”
- LOS ANGELES TIMES

“The shade of Claude Monet must be pleased. Hirsch, however, goes beyond her intense optical sensitivity to nuances of time and season, and she catches in the reflective surfaces of the pond something of her own emotional truths... This visionary view of the pond throbs with buzzing and blooming life... it never sinks into the arbitrary or the chaotic. We are convinced of the power and ultimate order of the universe — not through the grandeur of some great landscape but rather by means of a mirror placed in an intimate and familiar site. The strong sense of mystery is therefore all the more astonishing… Hirsch's hours of observation are rewarded by the sureness of gesture of a Chinese master… Hirsch’s painting cycle has progressed from contemplative and ethereal images to those that have the force of passionate revelation.” - ARTWEEK

“Hirsch's paintings have developed to an extraordinary degree from her personal, intuitive growth processes. Hirsch's willingness to allow this iconography to flow unresisted into existence has resulted in an intuitive and unanticipated revelation of the esoteric, mystical roots of her Jewish heritage.” - SPACE

 “Gilah Hirsch’s lush oil paintings of food equate the slick surfaces of glazed vegetables or the soft creamy substance of cupcake frostings with female anatomy in imagery that is at once beautiful and repellent.” - ARTWEEK

“Hirsch’s slide lecture provided further examples of how people could explore the healing power of the visual arts.” - AMERICAN ARTIST

“Standing directly in front of her enlarged compositions you can see only color, not shapes. Yet backing away for a more distant view, the organic components of her paintings become clearer, more in focus” - ARTWEEK

“Her exhibition …involves a subjectivity of content rare in contemporary art. Hirsch’s revelation come from deep inside the artist …(Her painting technique now involves the layering of translucent glazes to create a glowing, luminous whole …Hirsch has visualized for us the profound sea change of the body and spirit that we may know from our own experiences, but which we never have been able to see before.” - ARTWEEK

“Gilah Yelin Hirsch …spends portions of her life in the wilderness, from which come her inspired writing and compelling paintings Hirsch proposes that an artist’s work can be on a larger scale than making products; it can also be a service to the world.” - SOUTHWEST ART

"Lacy washes …seem to float above the shallow water of the canvas …a rapid calligraphy establishes a vibrant linear tapestry over the surface, and the oil paints impersonate pastels. Each stroke, each gesture is charged with a tremendous energy and immediacy” - ARTWEEK

“Hirsch produces eerie landscapes of animated trees in a timeless dance …Natural vignettes are also portrayed with the fantastic twist of a visionary eye …Hirsch’s respect and attraction towards a metaphysical beauty infuses her work. In all these nature paintings …is portrayed a passion and tenderness for the pantheistic guises of nature. These new canvases are charged with vitality.”
- ART SCENE

“Loose handling loaded with surface event, marks the approach of Gilah Yelin Hirsch to details and ordinary things observed in the nonurban environment.” - ART SCENE

“The difference between Hirsch and many of the others (artists) lies more in an attitude toward life than in the way she applies pint to the canvas …her work actually is an examination of life, moving toward the light.” - THE DAILY BREEZE

Books that cite Hirsch’s work: “An opening to what we can’t quite see — that is, to the mysterious realm — Underlies the nature paintings of Gilah Yelin Hirsch ...Numinosity runs through her pictures like fire in a fire-opal. You feel it in the glisten of fermented light, dancing like burnished copper through the trees... Sometimes in Hirsch's paintings, trees even learn to fly.” - SUZI GABLIK, THE REENCHANTMENT OF ART

"In her work, the body is the temple of the soul." - GLORIA FEMAN ORENSTEIN, THE REFLOWERING OF THE GODDESS

“For Hirsch …the act of painting is not so much a process of invention or creation as it is one of releasing what is already known …To tap these springs of personal material is to hone awareness on all levels of being …Her work led her to the erotic mystical, to the dance of life that is the moment of every living cell…” - ELINOR W. GADON, THE ONCE AND FUTURE GODDESS

“From the first painting she did at UCLA in 1967, Gilah’s work has been assertive and marked with a definite style. Always pictorial, her first series consisted of elements taken from architectural environments reconstituted as patterns of light. Such a painting is ‘Intent’, based on the experience of looking through an open tent flap” - ARTISTS OF THE SPIRIT