Articles and Reviews

Al Asr Antoine Zarzour June 22, 2006 Zahle, Lebanon 
L’Orient Le Jour Maya Ghandour Hert May 30, 2006 Beirut, Lebanon 
The Gazette Karen Schafer June 8, 2005 Bethesda, MD 
Aïshti Magazine Kaelen Wilson-Goldie Feb/Mar 2005 Beirut, Lebanon 
The Daily Star Kaelen Wilson-Goldie December 23, 2004 Beirut, Lebanon 
ArabAd Mona Iskandar October 2004 Beirut, Lebanon 
The Gazette Claudia Rousseau September 22, 2004 Bethesda , MD 
Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan September 17, 2004 Washington , DC 
Washington City Paper Dave Jamieson September 10, 2004 Washington , DC 
The Virginian-Pilot Teresa Annas June 19, 2004 Virginia Beach , VA 
The Gazette Claudia Rousseau February 25, 2004 Bethesda , MD 
WAMU 88.5 FM Kojo Nmandi Show February 21, 2004 Washington , DC 
The Dartmouth Mignon Lamia February 07, 2004 Hanover , NH 
The Dartmouth Gerald Auten January 30, 2004 Hanover , NH 
The Dartmouth Barry Hashimoto January 23, 2004 Hanover , NH 
The Dartmouth Bruce Gago January 22, 2004 Hanover , NH 
Washington , DC Art News Lenny Campello November 02, 2003 Washington , DC 
WTOP "Man About Town"& WGMS Classical 103.5 Bob Madigan July/August, 2003 Washington , DC 
The New Mexican Craig Smith June 14-20 Santa Fe, NM 
WETA TV "Around Town" Bill Dunlap April 18&20, 2002 Washington, DC 
Concord Monitor Christine Hamm January 17, 2002 Concord, NH 
NY ARTS Mark Daniel Cohen October 2001 New York, NY 
Art New England Mark Daniel Cohen Oct/Nov 2001 Boston, MA 
Erie Times-News Karen Rene Merkle October 18, 2001 Erie, PA 
An-Nahar Laure Ghoreib July 21, 2001 Beirut, Lebanon 
New York Times William Zimmer July 8, 2001 New York, NY 
Connecticut Post Phyllis A.S. Boros June 3, 2001 Hartford, CT 
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Rebecca Sodergren May 15, 2001 Pittsburgh,PA 
Boston Sunday Globe Mark Dagostino April 6, 1997 Boston, MA 
The Sunday Telegraph Dean Shalhoup April 6, 1997 Nashua, NH 
Boston Sunday Globe Mark Dagostino April 7, 1996 Boston, MA 
The Boston Globe Cate McQuaid January 18, 1996 Boston, MA 
Art New England Susan Mulski Oct/Nov 1995 Boston, MA 
Concord Monitor Susan DiLuzio October 13, 1994 Concord, NH 
South End News Cate McQuaid May 26, 1994 Boston, MA 
Bay Windows Shawn Hill May 12, 1994 Boston, MA 
Improper Bostonian Charles Giuliano May 11-24, 1994 Boston, MA 
Boston Sunday Globe Nancy Stapen May 23, 1993 Boston, MA 
Ray Gun Jack Basher June/July 1993 USA/Canada 
Where Colleen Grewing May 1993 Washington, DC 
Newport This Week John Pantalone October 29, 1992 Newport, RI 
Atlanta Magazine Logan Mabe September 1992 Atlanta, GA 
North Shore Sunday Alexander Stevens December 9, 1990 Lawrence, MA

These statements, a trail of ideas scattered over the years, are verbal insights into the thoughts and obsessions that give birth to the imagery. They are not explanations of my work. They are invitations to the viewers to interact with the images and allow their own dialogues to be actively meditated. Like the paintings, these statements provide orientation in our search for meaning.

The Quest 
1987

My paintings are my search incarnate. They are my questions taking form in a world where neither knowledge nor ignorance are absolute. They are not answers or findings to share but rather the journey one takes not knowing where it began and where it ends.

My work is my quest in the field of the self where sanctity and sin, wisdom and madness, light and darkness, life and death grow abundantly. It is my dive to the depths of my solitude where I stand face to face with my self, with god, with the devil, with nature, with all generations past, present and future. It is my search in the silence where voices sometimes whisper and sometimes shout and scream, where mountains are leveled and valleys rise, where destiny is unveiled and freedom is sealed.

My life is my gift to my work and my work is the gift of my life. My work is about me, but isn't it about you too? By digging to the depth of my being I discovered that I'm only a pilgrim, a pilgrim whose journey is "The Quest".

Your Tragedy Is Mine 
1988

I dedicate this show to the Children of Lebanon, and they dedicate it to the Children of the World.

I believe that to be an artist is a vocation. It's a call to leave the world and live for the Word, the Message that you are called to reveal.

I, as an artist, am a tool in larger hands, more creative and more powerful. I have tried more than once to convince myself that I am the master and that these powers are there to serve me, but my life - my work - has proved the opposite. It's quite mysterious when you think that you are the Creator and find out that you are only the Doll, that you are lifeless, sterile and empty if these powers don't move you, fertilize you and fill you.

Dolls, puppets and marionettes, are these what we are? How often are we in control of our destiny? Do we make our own way, or do we just walk in the way that has been prepared for us? To what present has our past entrusted us and does the future know with what arms the present has left us? We don't even know where we come from, we question what our mold is made of, we wonder about the future that is already ours, and we still think we are the masters!

Dolls! and when life is given to them they choke themselves with their strings, wrap themselves with their cords and bind themselves with their wires; 
Dolls! and the weak is the doll of the strong, the strong of the stronger, and the strongest of destiny; 
Dolls! and whenever Time allows it Power, Wealth, and Advancement play with the lives of the weak, the poor, and the simple; 
Dolls! and who of us was not made? And who of us is his own Creator? 
Dolls! but we are given an awareness of who we are. Thus, we frequently choose to live in the illusion that we are the masters who create dolls; 
Dolls! and how often we become the dolls of our creation; 
Dolls! Politics, Religion, Economy, and Science are games that we play with and how many of us are their subjects! 
Dolls! and constantly our Soul, Mind, Heart, and Body agitate, move, shake, and imprison us; 
Dolls! we are shaped by yesterday, caught by today, and reshaped by tomorrow; 
Dolls! wearing masks of rank, class, and profession. We're all thrown in the melting Fire of Life. 
Flames everywhere: Truth and Violence, Beauty and Impurity, Youth and Sterility, Peace and Hatred, Love and Pride, Light and Darkness, Life and Selfishness, Knowledge and Blindness, Wisdom and Madness, Reality and Illusion; 
Dolls! And we are so small in front of Hunger, War, Plague, and Death; 
Dolls! Time leads us to where kings, emperors, popes, clergymen, politicians, judges, advocates, physicians, scientists, artists, doctors, philosophers, astrologers, theologians, merchants, laborers, peasants, sowers, thieves, whores, madmen, criminal, charlatans dance with the same Partner.

I wonder whether we become equal or different, whether we get unified or separated after that Dance.

Destiny generates its Dynasties and crushes them. Can we make our destiny by choosing our destination? Do we choose the latter?

I am an artist, I was called, put on a path, and was told to walk it. As an artist, I am a doll in the powerful hands of Creativity, I cannot evade them when they want to use me and I cannot hold them when they desert me. I am a doll and when Love doesn't charge me, I am lifeless, sterile, and empty.

Shared Solitude 
1993

A show is a private moment made public; an intimate space made collective.

In his surrender to Creativity, when he is a tool in greater molding hands, the artist becomes a target attracting concealed thoughts, veiled emotions, and revealing observations that struggle their way from the contained invisible world into the ordered chaos of the sensory one. To submit himself to these transforming powers is to accept to be an open wound, fragile yet healing, where passing experiences and fading moments are imprinted in his being and transfigured into cells in his organism. To deliver his life to its selective destiny and dictated choices is to be transferred through space and time to images that breathe his spirit and communicate his presence beyond the appearances of reality. The individual and the universal are intertwined.

As you enter the showroom, you enter one's solitude: know that around you are traces of the trail of a wayfaring soul, stations of her journey where her fate rests: windows onto her labors, struggles, contemplations, and aspirations; witnesses of her encounters with Love, Death, Pleasure, Time, God, Nature, and the Devil; Images extracted from her reflections on the absurdity of Man's knowledge, power, and wealth and the hypocrisy of his freedom, law, and justice.

As you accompany my wandering, listen; you may be able to hear voices you avoid by diving into evasive hyperactivity and futile production; you may find an invitation to leave the fortress of your security and comfort and to discover the source of life in you.you might retrieve yourself in this shared solitude.

Tomb to Womb (A show dedicated to Jean Vanier) 
1996

Far from being a novelty, the concept of Life as an ongoing combustion is an everyday renewal of one's energy to transform the decay of living into an abundance of fruitful existence. Living is a process of dying, incessant and perpetual. Life's triumph is the cycle of daily oxidation resolved into simpler life-giving constituents, sprouting new life from a putrid decomposition.

At the heart of its course, my work has adopted this quiet evolutionary truth. Observing nature's perpetual putrefaction and re-creation, meditating on its continual cycle of decay and growth, and listening to its dialogue in ebb and tide, my art takes action, like the fungi, to bring to light the li8fe dormant within. My work's continuity is my belief's affirmation of our potential to find truth if we thirst for it' to attain light if we acknowledge our disillusion; and to retrieve life in the midst of our brokenness despite our fateful pursuit of wealth, power, and elitism and despite our insistence on shuffling and confusing truths in poignant hypocrisy and intelligent rhetorics.

What does my exhibition offer to you? Did you find it disturbing rather than entertaining? "Is this not what you expected to see?" Is not the brightest light in my painting but a dull shadow when compared to the faintest ray of reality? Is our being "comfortable numb" a statement of our helplessness or our indifference to an inevitable, seemingly irreparable reality? Face your decay; accept your mortality; tame the death in you, therein emerges the scream for life. In the transient find the eternal and in the ephemeral search for unity through change of substance. Crises can be occasion or danger: the choice is yours. The mission of this show is complete when its life is transferred, when you leave with the bacteria of transforming the tomb to a womb reactivated in you.

Ecce Homo 
2000

A show is a private moment made public, an intimate space made collective. Through an image world, illusion meets reality and deception may reveal truth. My work is an affirmation of my belief that we will find truth if we thirst for it, attain freedom if we acknowledge our disillusion, and experience our divinity if we embrace our humanity. My art questions, striving to offer insights but seldom presenting answers in a world where neither knowledge nor ignorance is absolute.

My paintings need your participation. I believe they are about your journey as well as mine. I hope they will engage you in a dialogue. When you enter this exhibition, you enter my solitude. Around you are traces of a wayfaring soul. My art is my search incarnate. It records my struggles to understand the polar roles in life of Good and Evil, Love and Lust, Hope and Despair, Creativity and Madness, Essence and Absurdity.

Art is confrontation, not escape. My art does not create a romantic ideal nor construct a realm made of poetic imagination or subjective reverie. It is art for life's sake. It creates a reflection of an objective reality that lives between the personal and the collective and captures a refraction of an actuality that vibrates between the internal and the external. To better understand Man, my work questions both the sacred and the profane, and my iconography does not spare universal icons or consensus symbols. Religious beliefs, political thoughts, social issues and psychological analyses become fields of examination and dispute, tools for dissertation and inquiry and the very dialectics of life's polarities. My work is a battlefield, not a peaceful garden. Here you witness fire and ash, light and smoke. Do not stop searching if a context offends you as scandalous. If you go beyond appearances you may uncover traces of your own probings and findings.

What can my work offer to you? What will you take from it? Will you find it unsettling rather than entertaining? Your search will color your perception, and your interpretations may reveal new insights for all of us. Ecce Homo.

The Holy Cost 
2002

Reality creates an image, the image reveals a truth. Inconstant, absurd, and indefinite images surround us, seeking our participation to validate in the Universal their truth, and ours. They initiate a process of introspection, provoke conviction, assail contempt, frustrate opinion and challenge belief only to confirm Truth. Images of Truth we are.

What is the Truth? Where is the Truth? Sometimes the Heart hides it, the Mind blinds it, the Will refuses it, Self-Interest mutates it, and complacent Morality destroys it. Isn't time yet to cease allying Truth with a pragmatic moral reason to exploit and exterminate those who are different, the Other? Can one be God's Chosen One if one is not a presence and manifestation of God's love, justice and mercy? How much meaning and unity and sacredness humanity brought to a suicidal, dismembered and fallen world?

Schism and division run deep in humankind. The mind is trying perpetually to explain and find itself through duality, conflict and resolution. Individually and collectively we live in discord. Are we reconciled to ourselves to comprehend that the Other is in us? From our division sprouts a vision, a deep yearning for unity that cannot be achieved if forgiveness and truth are defiled by prejudice, double standard and self-justified morality.

Through my images I'm walking a path of reconciliation, searching for unity in my understanding of Hope and Fear, Mind and Heart, Body and Soul, Male and Female, Justice and Self-Interest, Power and Fragility, Truth and Falsehood, Sacred and Profane.

I found in me saints and sinners, martyrs and murderers, marginal and elite. Every stone has been turned so I may be confirmed in the realization of the Oneness of Life. How can I recognize and care for the poor and broken in you if I am not capable of discovering, recognizing and receiving the poor and broken in me? My segregation and refusal of you is the very truth of my self-alienation and division.

Many of theses paintings will flip and reverse any stand you take. They will claim and defend its opposite. They are testimonies of our self-absorption and incapability of recognizing the Other in one's Self. They challenge you to take a stand then to dare adopt a different truth, that of the Other, so your truth may become whole.

We are the Holy Cost. When Deception and Falsehood seem on the verge of triumph, all my hope and belief is that Truth will prevail and set humankind free, free to be unified, free to be one, free to be love.

What Is Truth 
2005

"What is truth? Pilate asked." John 18:38

How often do we defile, twist, alter, hide, mystify, stifle, invent, veil, pollute, embellish and desecrate truth in the name of truth? This is our fall: calloused hearts that close our eyes. Do we strive to murder truth when it does not serve our glory, privilege, profit and power? What is truth? Is it to be searched for or to be made? Is it to be perpetually destroyed and reconstructed? Is it Truth if it is only our truth? Does one religion, culture, people, or time possess truth? If Truth is eternal, can it change? Can it be continuously revealed and understood? How do we reconcile truth with inconvenient facts? What new labels do we attach to that truth?

We call it triumph when the power of rhetoric successfully presents deceit as truth! We call it a political victory when the art of deception confidently crushes truth as an enemy! We celebrate the power of argument that conceals their truth and shrouds it then presents our willful misinterpreted fragment of the truth as truth! Are we truly seeking truth? Do we want to know, admit and accept truth in spite of the wounds it may inflict on us? Why do we seek truth? To be justified in despising those who have different truths? We claim truth and call the others 'infidels' 'primitives', 'barbaric' or 'savages' and seek either to convert them or exterminate them. Can different truths coexist? Can religious and political leaders starve for absolute power and for Truth?

Will you follow Truth when it goes through ravaging realities and damaged realizations? Are you ready to let go of your assumptions of where, when and how it may be found? What if you must go through defiling mud and vile caves, through troubled awareness and consciousness filled with doubts, questions and uncertainties? Have you found Truth, a truth, your truth?

"The truth shall set you free". Truth can bring one's demise; how will one accept it? Can one's demise lead to one's freedom? Who can accept this logic? "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." Matthew 25:40 Are we ready to see God in the poorest of the poor? "In fact, for this reason, I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth." John 18:37 I never considered this statement before; I never noticed the raison-d'être for Christ's incarnation stated so clearly. Am I limiting truth to my ideas about Christ? Can an atheist, or a non-Christian live Christ-like even when he claims that he does not believe in Christ? Can Christ be a law written in the heart? Can the truth of the heart take precedence over orthodox teachings? Am I ready to see and perceive? Do I claim that I have the truth? "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains." John 9:41

My work does not point to itself. It invites to go beyond superficial readings and reflect on the questions the images reflect. An image may lead to a truth. Confronting sad aspects of life to bring a little understanding and healing to it is life-affirming. Questioning what is established and prevailing may be easily dismissed as outrageous and offensive; are you willing to consider that maybe, maybe an aspect of truth may be obstructed there? Will you unveil it even when it threatens your comfortable judgments and perceptions? Dare to doubt your convictions, to question the truthfulness of your beliefs! It is my will, my desire and my intent to search for meaning and purpose in clashing realities and conflicting truths, and to find life-giving seeds in the midst of contradictions, oppositions and contrasts.