Jana Eid may have the earthy look of the attractive woman in her mid-forties that she is, but when she speaks she strikes you as a person whose passion for painting has taken epic proportions to become a tool for personal growth.
Eid started painting as a child, but it was already more than a hobby: "Seeing colours in front of me made me feel safe," she explains. "I found peace in them." Later, her fine arts studies were interrupted by her marriage, and gradually her career took off in the unrelated field of journalism. In retrospect, she considers she was caught in the machinery: "I went through all the stages of journalism, up to editor in chief of a magazine, before a small crisis in my life reminded me that it was in painting that I could find peace." This was in 2001: Eid partially stepped away from journalism to start painting in earnest. About a year ago, as she went from one discovery to the next, it had become such a passion she dedicated herself to it entirely: "This past year I have been painting from morning to evening. I even get up at night to paint." Her work having been accepted at the Salon d'Automne in Sursock last year, she is now holding her first exhibit: Quête en Couleurs ("Quest in Colours").
Colour indeed imposes itself as the driving force behind the paintings exhibited. More specifically, they are intensely warm colours like so many shades of gold. They suggest, rather than define, organic forms where humanoid silhouettes can sometimes be recognized. Eid's style was not always so subtle: early on the human face in its different expressions was her subject of choice. She abandoned oil for acrylics, a medium she feels resemble her: "It dries fast, it's nervous, it can express what I feel or think." But Eid also discovered the wonder of natural pigment: colours in their original powder form from which she mixes paint herself. "It was a challenge to take them in my hands," she says as her hands act out her words, "to feel them, to study their potential. I explored colour – I needed to."
In parallel, her figurative style evolved: "The scream that came out of me was turned into a very personal, deeper language." This language is meant to be perceived more than seen. To underline her point, Eid shows how the paintings contain hidden elements: forms painted in quasi-transparent pigment, that can only be seen by someone who takes the time to contemplate the work under different angles.
"The white canvas," Eid says, "is a womb where all possibilities are incubating." Yet her works are themselves rich with possibilities of interpretation, their forms so subtle that one can easily project into them. "I am not into total abstraction, but it is very important for me to allow the viewers to feel his is himself a creator. Everyone looks at a painting with his own culture, his own memories, and he should be given free rein to reinvent a world with the basic shapes I provide. Nothing in my paintings limits the viewer's imagination in space or time."
"The Greek philosophers said: Know thyself," the artist quotes. Painting is her means to that end: a quest for herself and life's answers. Her spiritual aspirations provide a key to understanding the language of her paintings. For instance, "the yellow represents light, but also a light I would like find in myself." The colour palette of Quête en Couleurs, she says, is a stage: "I needed these warm colours. I was seeking their sunny, brilliant, luminous character." Eid feels that the interaction between how the colours look and how they make her feel reflects "the constant conversation between Creation (and the Creator) and the human being."
Unavoidably, putting the fruit of such a personal progression out in public cannot but cause some trepidation in the artist. "It's like taking a newborn away from its mother. As long as it's in the womb it is safe, but once it is exhibited, it is exposed. One has to learn to respect differing opinions and criticism, as long as it's constructive." Eid is glad when visitors understand her work, but she recognises that it can only affect different people differently. "It can answer or raise questions, calm or arouse anxieties. The important thing is that it leaves nobody indifferent."
The artist herself goes through highs and lows for her passion, that she jokingly refers to as "a new religion I embraced". "You are carried by a period of inspiration, and then you're done, and you feel the void. You are separated from the life that was growing in you. It's unsettling. You wonder: Now what?" No challenge is too big for Eid however as she carries on, endeavouring to give to painting as much as painting has given her.
      | Article by Joumana Medlej |