Her brush strokes dance and so do her eyes as Seta Manoukian explains the 25 or so paintings that compose her current exhibit: Dancing Emptiness. The event is significant for Lebanon, as the artist has not exhibited in her land of birth in 17 years, but it is specially significant for Manoukian herself: "I have finally arrived", she beams.

A tall, 58-year-old brunette with a contemplative gaze, Manoukian lets us take in the contents of the exhibit with fresh eyes before revealing its meaning. The two words of the title capture the essence of what the viewer is about to discover as he enters the gallery. Vibrant white backgrounds first fill the eye, followed by the single abstract dancing shape that is echoed from painting to painting. In a period where art and design suffer from a horror vacui that find its relief in layered visuals, this abundance of white takes an independent stand to re-state the importance of emptiness and silence. "This is no longer a mere paper surface to me; I call it a 'white field'", she specifies, and goes on to explain it is a presence of emptiness rather than an absence of content. From this void springs life as a series of indefinable forms whose shape and colour are never exactly the same, but nevertheless are animated with the same idea. In an attempt to grasp them we first find ourselves projecting more tangible things into them, such as dancing flames, birds in flight, or stems reaching up towards the light. Yet as it turns out, what is intended here is not the abstraction of a physical thing, but the manifestation of an invisible force. Each form starts with a gathering horizontal motion, to spiral upwards and end up poised in a vertical line. There is stillness in this movement, and life in the whiteness: a balance reminiscent of Asian art and philosophies. The latter may have played an indirect role in the genesis of the series, as Manoukian is a serious practitioner of meditation and her art cannot be dissociated from her inner life. She often refers to Far Eastern notions as she explains: "This is a Dance of energy, of the four elements that spiral around a vertical line with which they seek to unite. They are the masculine and feminine, the Yin and Yang, Shiva and Shakti – the duality that is in everything. And when they do unite, the duality is no longer: they become one."

Each of the pieces on exhibit is a separate rendering of this simple yet deep concept, and as one traces their evolution from the earliest one, done in 1999, till the latest, dating from 2003, it begins to look as if we were being shown stages in a study, or perhaps a quest. When asked, it is with a warm smile of contentment that the artist confirms this is the synthesis of 35 years of work. Manoukian' career began in 1966, and her biography since then unrolls an exciting progression of exhibits, installations and performances on three continents. Although early signs of the Dancing Emptiness series had been showing up now and then in her paintings for the past 20 years, the road was not easy. "Before the war I started experimenting with white on white compositions, and I understood the importance of this colour that is neither life nor death. I also realized that if I gazed at a white wall, outer distractions and my own thoughts were set aside; I went to a place of silence and light". Already then she was searching for her inner self and seeking to develop a more intuitive mind. She fought and won what she calls her "personal wars" before the turn of political events engulfed her into an exterior one that nearly made her lose her centre. Fortunately, moving to the United States allowed her to retrieve her balance <ETH> and her previous drive. "I went back to the vertical line", she remembers, "and to the energy".

The war was one influence, meditation was another, deeper one: it influenced Manoukian's artistic approach, gradually taking all the chatter out of her paintings until she kept only the "white field", the fertile ground from which all art springs. She also shed the traditional working methods: she now prefers to sit down with paper and brushes and allow the work to flow out in an instant. "It's no longer my superficial self painting. I don't think about the movement, I don't pick the colours: my deeper mind does". So all this work was the product of single moments of inner connection? "Yes", she agrees. "It is a Now."

The result of this slow maturation looks, but by no means is, simple, and it naturally claims no relation to existing art currents or fads. It was born entirely of Seta Manoukian's self-quest or to be more accurate, of the end to her quest. Yet it is not entirely without reminding one of precedents, even the artist herself: the interview has ended and we are now sitting informally among a group of her friends enjoying petits fours while commenting on her work, when she shares with them, out of the blue: "I was telling someone earlier that they remind me of Arab dances in ancient days, part Sufi and part Indian, where they spun and spun around an axis so that their spirit could rise up..."

Article by Joumana Medlej