I am exploring two different themes. Different in styles yet complementary. The first one is Colorful Mutations and the other one is Emotionally Drained. But why did I choose to work on these two subjects? What do they mean?

Colorful Mutations is an escape from the environment in which I grew in. The only possible way to do that is by recreating a new environment, by transforming harsh reality into a more acceptable one.

Bearing in mind that I come from Lebanon a small mountainous country on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, with its narrow streets, clustered buildings and decadent urbanism, you become eventually claustrophobic, even more when you are living constant wars, with a feeling of a no way out except for the Mediterranean Sea that, in a limited sense, opens up the horizon.

How would you dream of a better life if not by imagining what would have been? This series of painting is only a tentative to transcend poor reality. In other words, it’s a way of sublimating my environment; a sort of escaping reality into a new realm. A realm similar to the ones we see in children’s illustrated book, in cartoon. A domain made by entangled shapes, bright colors, absurd or strange figures and animals derived from pictures I had seen in illustrated books when I was a child.

Transforming massive and rigid constructions, industrial structures, and technological items into lighter, freer and organic shapes. Sturdiness gives way to curves. Grey concrete gives way to colorful walls. Geometrical shapes give way to biomorphic ones. We enter the world of fantasy; on the edge of symbolism. It’s not the science fiction fantasy but rather closer to children’s world fantasy. It’s a way of idealizing reality. The harrowing Beirut becomes so welcoming. This series is a suspension bridge between childhood and maturity. A stimulation for the mind.

In Emotionally Drained, the theme is utterly different yet it completes the first one. Colorful Mutations was a stimulation to dream, E.D. is a stimulation to make a change.

We are constantly bombarded by bad news on TV, internet, radio. We have learned to accept violence, injustice without trying to change anything. We are programmed to work as robots, 8 hours a day, even sometimes more. We are worried about paying taxes while in certain parts of the globe, millions of people are being massacred, moved from their home, women raped, animals getting exterminated, trees being cut in enormous numbers…. Let’s consider men’s cupidity, irresponsibility and impertinence again and again in ecology, geopolitics, in using religion to brainwash weaker minds, in planning endless wars, etc. We have learned to accept men’s complex of superiority without trying to change a thing. But why?

Why is modern society drifting away to oblivion? Why that degradation of morals and loss of any good will to make a better world?
That was the stimuli for me to create these paintings.

I chose to work in a very expressionistic way: the paint technique is rough in some areas with the use of thick paint while in other areas very light, I used glazes of colors, more defined contour drawing. I like the contrast between the sense of finished and unfinished work.

These paintings are done to push viewers to think about certain issues.

Like Paul Klee once said: "Art doesn’t reproduce the visible; rather it makes visible”.

Finally let me just say that all great philosophers have manage well to criticize modern world. I’m not going to brag about being able to do the same. I lack indeed maturity, distance and the right words to say it. I only intend to make from this work a testimony for posterity, a voice that says: stop and react.