Beirut has been my home for the last year; I came in the aftermath of the Lebanese Israeli war. I saw all the destruction of the bombing and sadness on peoples faces.
After I set up my studio and started to paint again, at first I kept painting out my inner images of Iraq…until Beirut started to work its way into my paintings, I found that I was fascinated with the richness of my surroundings
In my everyday walks the richness of the subjects around me makes my head swivel in every direction trying to mentally capture these scenes.
At first I wanted to document what I saw and the paintings are quite realistic but I feel with time I will paint them in a more expressionistic and free way. These images are still too new in my memory to be able to take them and process them into a more abstract version.
I look at this period as a time of readjustment, as now that I am back in the middle east it is imposing itself into my painting process. Whereas for the last 25 years or more I have lived in Europe and the USA, all my paintings were drawn from my early years of growing up in Iraq, then back to ancient history and Mesopotamian Sumerian mythology.
My move here to Beirut has added a new dimension to my work where the present images are all around me wherever I look and no longer in the archives of my memories.
Leila Kubba Kawash
July 2007