Roula Chreim

Internationally acclaimed artist and curator, founder of Beirut Art World NGO, Roula Chreim shares reasons for an ongoing theme that surfaces in her work. Between extensive traveling in her previous career and being displaced after her house was destroyed via war, “home” is a pivotal idea and crucial place that manifests from her psyche and heart in many of her works as well as in her life. As a young artist, she painted small houses and meadows, inspired by her former town of Salhieh. Ms. Chreim started painting at the young age of four years old, with great support coming from her parents and art teachers. Throughout her life, Roula has been to more than 160 cities and communities in more than 40 different countries throughout the world. This enabled her the great opportunity to explore and delve into the cultural influences and origins of the art produced in those various communities, cities, and countries. In accord with these travels, she has in her mixed-media canvases, incorporated objects found or seen during her extensive travels, with a portrayal of houses, homes, or inhabitants of other cultures dominating many of her pieces. Roula paints her figures, interior scenes, and cityscapes with an aesthetic that evokes Symbolism, Abstraction, and German Expressionism. Some of her operatic and ballet scenes have bits of Degas in them, perhaps more in subjects matter than style. Her works retain many unique characteristics, such as her preference for abstracted human figures, buildings, and compositions while her wonderful palette knife sketches are elegant, sophisticated, and usually display a violin or cello, all setting a tonality of mood. Her passion for color is displayed in her artwork along with her abstractions, one will find a subtle quality that exudes sensuousness at its core, layered with romantic composure and always a compellingness that exudes passion. Collectively, her oeuvre is made up of vivid expressionistic paintings that communicate profound feelings to the viewer, whether her medium is on wood, canvas, metal, or murals imbued with oils, acrylics, or mixed-media.