I’m an artist, writer, and technologist on a quest to live an authentic, intentional, and creative life and inspire others to do the same.
Hi, my name is Yael Gavish (pronounced Ya-El Ga-Vish).
Thank you for visiting!I spent many years in the business world before going back to creating art, a lifelong obsession. My work expresses my journey to discover who I truly am, free from the societal constraints and expectations imposed on us from birth. I believe knowing ourselves is the key to living a life we’re truly in love with.
Welcome
Art
Who are you when you strip away the facade?
In my minimalist paintings and fiber art, I document the lifelong process of uncovering our true selves. I give form to the state of activated peace we reach when we know and fully accept ourselves, replacing external sources of power with a much more potent internal one.
My quest to discover who I truly am brought me from a successful technology career in Silicon Valley back to art, a practice I abandoned for 20 years. It made me recognize the social and familial structures that separate us from our creativity and true desires, sometimes for life. Thus, seeing who we truly are requires removing the external clutter—identity, behaviors, and beliefs we adopted, to reveal the ones that are inherent to us.
While this process is often more challenging than staying in the comfort zone of conformity and social acceptance, it is key to enacting change as a creative process, where we build what we want to see in the world, not just resist what already exists.
Writing
I share what I learned about purpose, mindset, and creativity in my quest to live a life that is authentic to my true self.
One day in 2017 I woke up and realized that I didn’t want to go to work—yet again. I quit my job before I knew what I wanted to do, and so began several years of experimentation and learning—a journey that completely changed my life. Though it eventually led me in a wildly different direction than I expected, my biggest shift was internal: I faced my own fears and limiting beliefs, as well as the expectations and limiting beliefs of people around me, and radically changed the way I think and show up in the world.
I now know we don’t have to take radical steps to create a better life. We can work to improve our well-being and impact right where we are, while also getting to know our true selves, free from social conditioning and ego stories. When we know ourselves, we let ourselves see and do what makes us come alive.
I hope that sharing my art and my journey will inspire greater curiosity in others about their purpose and creative potential, and help them live life on their terms.
Biography
My prior life, in case you’re curious…
My experience includes product management at Facebook, Yahoo!, and several startups (including a couple I co-founded), management consulting at McKinsey & Company, and software engineering at Sun Microsystems. I have a BA and an MSc in Computer Science from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, and an MBA from The Wharton School.
I’d love to hear from you! I always welcome feedback or inquiries about my work, potential commissions, projects, or whatever else is on your mind.