I am so thrilled to show in Beirut because it takes me back home. I have always had an ambivalent feeling about where I belong. For as long as I can remember, I have felt like an outsider, regardless of where I have lived.

 

Shortly after the war ended, I was walking in downtown Beirut. A car load of guys drove by, and one of them pointed accusingly at me and said, "you are a foreigner!".

I was shocked that my otherness' was so obviously foreign in a land that I felt was my home.

 

Perhaps to show this community that being a foreigner is not necessarily a bad thing if your heart is in the right place, I have immersed myself again in the world of my Beiruti friends and family to produce this exhibit. I want to share with you my affection for these people, as well as, a part of my American life.

 

I am a "traditional" painter at a time when the art world has embraced a more cyber driven, conceptual ethos. I paint portraits that tell stories. Yes, it is realism.

I sometimes make up backgrounds, color, and light. Getting anatomy right is important for me. The story of the painting is not necessarily the story of the person posing. If I become obsessed with an idea, I search for a model in the same way that a film maker might search for an appropriate actor.

 

I focus on the inner life and psychology of the subject. This becomes crucial to the meaning of the painting. It does not, however, exclude the possibility of my projected fantasy onto the subject, where the line between biography and fiction might be blurred.

Rima Jabbur - 2011