Vered Pasternak has been working on a series entitled THE OTHER IS US over the last few years. In this series, she searches for her identity as an immigrant through the images of the homeless who live in her neighborhood. The depictions of those men and women became a vehicle for her own feelings of dislocation, loneliness, and fear. Very much like them, she believes that she experiences deep, disturbing emotions due to major life changes. For Pasternak, their presence resembles her state of mind even though their lives appear to be completely different. At the core of her need to paint lies the desire to express her own emotions while giving a voice to those she feels are voiceless.While working directly with the homeless individuals she paints, Pasternak feels as if she is also healing her own wounds, as well as still searching for a home, as she had left everything she knew behind to build a new life in the U.S. Vered Pasternak is an Israeli artist who immigrated to this country two decades ago. She currently lives in Miami, FL, and travels to Boone, NC, and Israel as often as she can.