At the Studio with Marwan
[00:00:00] 
Tamara: Hello, and welcome to a new episode of articulations by ITERARTE. I am Tamara Chalabi, co-founder of ITERARTE. And with me today is the artist Marwan Sahramani, who is of mixed Lebanese and European heritage. Known for his rich canvas paintings, Sahramani works through vivid colors and a blend of techniques, focusing on the essence of the artworks and the emotional responses they produce. His work has been featured internationally in Paris, Dubai and London among other places. In this podcast we reflect together upon Sahramani's habit of creating outdoors in the mountains of Tarbena, in Spain, the inspirations and philosophies of [00:01:00] Emmanuel Levinas, and finding expression and solace in the sea in Lebanon, where he lives amidst the constant tensions in the country. 
Tamara: Marwan, it's very nice to be here with you in the studio. 
Marwan Sahmarani: Nice having you Tamara too. Since a long time we have a talk over the phone and it's better to be face to face. 
Tamara: Absolutely. And I'm so happy to be here with this light that's coming from the sea that you write and paint about so much. And the light from All sides.
Tamara: It's great. You talked a lot about light in the past and your work and what the meaning of light is to you. One of the questions I've always wanted to ask you is how do you try to transmit light in your [00:02:00] work?
Marwan Sahmarani: In fact, every place has a specific light.
Marwan Sahmarani: And as I work in a couple of studio, like you say, there is the place and then the mountain and now the studio in Beirut. So each space has its proper light. That is transmitted in the painting in a specific way. When I talk about light, it's not about just the luminosity, it's about everything surrounding the geographic place of my studio.
Marwan Sahmarani: So yeah, now you come at the right time. The sunset is beautiful. And, I'm working on a series that is more inspired by some drawing I did this year. Those drawings I'm using very bright color and I'm changing from a palette to another palette. 
Marwan Sahmarani: It was done during winter, the light is colder and right now coming to primavera, how we say, to the spring. Light and it's much warmer, it's much colorful and maybe it's my state of mind who's a bit more [00:03:00] 
Tamara: Hopeful. 
Marwan Sahmarani: Hopeful, no, but that's like there's strong color, but I like, you know, each color has a proper emotion.
Marwan Sahmarani: If I use bright color doesn't mean I'm very joyful, but I think there is many yellow also to use, and it depends which yellow I'm using. Some yellow are very acid, very lemony, and some yellow are more toned down, going to orange. So of course, the light affect unconsciously, but I let it also come easily on the canvas.
Marwan Sahmarani: Like Picasso used to say, if I don't have blue, I use red. 
Tamara: So, in fact, you are very much at peace with all colors, in a way. 
Marwan Sahmarani: You know, I love colors. I think, the colors are like, how we say, musical notes. There's seven and a composer have to use the seven notes and he could create a symphony with it.
Marwan Sahmarani: And I think I'm trying to use the color to create. I will not work without color. Some artists who are restricted to some color, they feel they could [00:04:00] work with two or three color. I need the whole palette in front of me. And of course it is related to the light. I'm sure we, how we say in television, not black and white, the 
Tamara: multicolor, 
Marwan Sahmarani: multicolor, or 
Tamara: technic color 
Marwan Sahmarani: technicolor.
Tamara: Yeah.
 
Marwan Sahmarani: They call it a goddess, this mountain they say that she was a strong woman and if you're not strong enough you can not live in front of it. 
Marwan Sahmarani: So there's a story behind it. I just grabbed the energy. It's really beautiful and I paint it like it is, it's not about the shape there's abstraction that comes from it. 
Tamara: And it's so magnetic and draws you so much that you go back to it every year.
Marwan Sahmarani: Every year I just do production sometime it's five paintings sometime it's thirty paintings. 
Tamara: And would you say that it's a bit like a meditation?
Marwan Sahmarani: All my work is about meditation. It's not about this one. It's getting out from the studio. 
Tamara: I was going to get to the subject of light because you talk a lot about light.
Marwan Sahmarani: I'm completely outdoor and the first time got in contact with the mountain. I went from the morning till the end of the [00:05:00] night, and I've tried to paint her realistic in a way, but with the changing of light. 
Marwan Sahmarani: So even at one point at 11 in the night, I used to take my easel and go down with my little light and try to paint it. It was completely dark, sometimes with the moon. So I really tried to catch the light falling and then it changed. 
Marwan Sahmarani: with time after 10 years, I've changed. It's about the feeling. Really it's hard to grab the "impermanEnce".. 
Tamara: The impermanence, the ephemerality yeah. 
Tamara: And what's the name of the mountain again? 
Marwan Sahmarani: la sierra de bernia . It's a goddess. I feel I'm connected to something. 
Tamara: It's a goddess because the local people call it a goddess?
Marwan Sahmarani: Yeah they say it's a goddess. That it's a very strong woman. And I try, to grab the energy around it. Just in the region. 
Marwan Sahmarani: I feel connected to spirituality with the universe. 
Tamara: Do you think that this feeling that you have are you able to reconnect to it every time you go back? Do you find that feeling again? 
Marwan Sahmarani: My [00:06:00] practice in Spain, it's like an enlightenment in meditation. I really feel elevated. And this is something that I don't feel when I'm in Lebanon, because I feel more rooted and more grounded in Lebanon energy in Lebanon, so different, but in Spain, I feel elevated. So my paintings are really completely different than when I do this. Even if I use the same color, I have more or less the same light in the Middle East and in Spain, but there is something else that I could not express that is transmitted in the painting. It's an energy. 
Marwan Sahmarani: It's a vibration. I think we are connected in a way by this vibration. 
Tamara: It's simpler perhaps. 
Marwan Sahmarani: It's simpler. You find it, it's much simpler. See, in painting what's really important to me is the vision. What you look and what you have, it's what you see. I see it and I feel it. And then I put it on a canvas in a very easy soft way without any effort. . And every year it's different. The [00:07:00] painting I do are different. This year I've put my wife in front of the painting. And I wanted to do a, how we say, collaboration between the figure and the surroundings. So I worked a lot on, on some connection between human and the nature. And so it wasn't the best painting, but it was interesting to see a
Tamara: also very female I would say because
Marwan Sahmarani: Yeah exactly and my wife is a strong person. The paintings were interesting, some of them were strong it was difficult because I was focusing on the person, on the figure. Even on the face because the face is your mirror of existence. 
Marwan Sahmarani: And I don't want to go too philosophical, but there is Levinas who talks a lot about the eye and you see your own death when you see someone else. This landscape it's interesting to see how it's react or what's come from it. 
Marwan Sahmarani: Also the contrast between the landscape that is, as you say, [00:08:00] eternal it will continue forever. 
Marwan Sahmarani: Compared to our very short, short... 
Tamara: Time on this earth. 
Marwan Sahmarani: The year before my painting is very sick and in fact, I learned how to repaint in front of the mountain. It happened 12 years ago. Before that... 
Tamara: what do you mean learn how to repaint? That's a big statement.
Marwan Sahmarani: I was free from all contention. I was free from a lot of history, baggage and then. 
Marwan Sahmarani: If I go back to 20 years ago, my painting was really related to this region because of my identity. My struggle was a very, I don't want to say political, but related to my identity. And my identity is very complex. Because my mother is a Palestinian and so there was this kind of...
Tamara: tension? 
Marwan Sahmarani: So my painting was reflecting this and when I decided to move in Spain, I said to myself, I just, again, I want to paint in front of the nature and [00:09:00] have one single thing to look at it. 
Marwan Sahmarani: Forget about everything. So I took the tube and the et les pinceaux , the brushes. And I let it go. The first painting was new for me. 
Tamara: To your work, but also a great burden to carry because you are constantly referring back to this tradition as almost a responsibility, I would say when you talk about the impressionists, you are very aware of, the incredible works that they've done and other things that they have carved in this world. But at the same time, you have such respect for it. And it informs so much of what you do. Even though you are existing in a different landscape and a different reality. Can you tell us more about this?
Marwan Sahmarani: I had a very rigorous education by knowing how to draw a model vivant, oh, you know and then is sculpture of plaster for years. At one point in life I decided to stop painting. 
Tamara: What did you do? 
Marwan Sahmarani: I try to work in [00:10:00] advertising and graphic design. It didn't work, but I stuck for five, six years, because I didn't believe in the act of painting anymore. 
Tamara: Why? 
Marwan Sahmarani: Because the contemporary scene was very present in the nineties. First painting was completely 
Tamara: put aside. 
Marwan Sahmarani: We were in the world where photography video a lot. Installation, not that much where. 
Tamara: Dominant. 
Marwan Sahmarani: Yeah. And my ego maybe it was a bit of insecurity. I didn't believe in me as a painter, especially when you look behind what you are saying. So I stopped for six years, seven years. I came back to painting. There was a wedding of one of my best friends, and I want to give him something very personal. And the only thing I saw, it was my early painting, early drawing. 
Marwan Sahmarani: So I came to Lebanon. I was living in Canada and I opened my portfolio. I said there was like 10, I say, choose whatever you want. And he said, oh, you stopped so many, [00:11:00] six years without any I didn't touch any brush. It's stupid how did you stop all this? I look at the trace I kept for five or six years of when I was practicing and my education. No trace of my life. And I said to myself every day I will wake up in the morning. I need to keep a trace of my existence. So I decide to. put a minute my life into a paper. But of course, I came back where I left at six years ago. 
Marwan Sahmarani: So I have this huge baggage of the art. I didn't know where to go. So I began unconsciously the process. With a lot of incertitude and I'm trying also to discover myself because I have, like I told you many identity. And I kept it organic with a lot of weakness. 
Tamara: What do you mean weakness? I mean, that's very strong [00:12:00] judgment on your part.
Marwan Sahmarani: I left the painting because I didn't, I thought, I was not good enough in the history of art. And I said for myself, I'm not, maybe I'm not supposed to be on this, on this chain. It's okay. If I do something and I'm nowhere I'm just doing it for myself. Even now when I to have this uncertainty I still remember the first time when I came back to painting, it's just a proof of my existence. 
Tamara: And you started this in Canada seven years after stopping. 
Marwan Sahmarani: The road was difficult because of course egos sometime bring you back to the reality of the art scene or to the reality of you want to sell, you want to please, you want to be part of a community. This is a part of me that I've been painting like this, it was political. And then when I came back to Spain, it's weird how life bring you what you need. And I went back to Spain because of family, but I chose the right [00:13:00] place to be. And it's a mountain who called me, a goddess, and I relearn how to paint there with a completely free mind. Putting aside the ego and just connecting. Connecting with stories connecting with even artists at the end. Artists come back to you. 
Marwan Sahmarani: I think even, I think every artist has a connection with his mentors. I'm connected to many painter that I respect like this one now.
Tamara: I see you're working on Caravaggio now. Tell me because Carravaggio has such a dramatic story. But also particularly in connection to lights.
Marwan Sahmarani: A lot. Yeah. I know, Carravaggio is the father of the Claro obscure. But Carravaggio what's interesting I know his life, his life was very chaotic. And he was a free artist and they all try to grab him. The violence in the being of Caravaggio, [00:14:00] I can relate to it as my own identity too. 
Tamara: So the violence that he has that you relate to, which I'm sure also can be seen in many of the artists you admire would you say that that is a big driver to paint? As a form of expression. 
Marwan Sahmarani: Yeah. I feel the violence here that I feel in all the paintings that I really like, even the contemporary one, the only thing that I feel I'm living. In Spain I really look at the light as a cosmic light. In Lebanon I look at the light like a very violent life that is coming from us and not from.
Tamara: Nature? 
Marwan Sahmarani: Another source. The light is very powerful and it's bringing me to painting. I don't know how to express it verbally, but it's just an unconscious feeling.
Tamara: Would you say this, the violence that you talk about it's because there's also energy that comes with violence it's often related to [00:15:00] a physical act would you say that this violence it's triggered by something else? That's anger. 
Marwan Sahmarani: Yeah. I think the violence in me maybe is genetic maybe is something that I carry, not for myself, but it is triggered by the land and by the ground that I'm living in this region and I think Lebanon and the region have seen it's really rich of violence history since 4,000 years. And I can feel this in my body. But for sure it trigger it. And then I express it in a painting in a way. I think in violence there is something very logical and very reasonable. 
Tamara: So when you are in front of a canvas and you have this impulse, how do you start painting? How do you begin?
Marwan Sahmarani: There's many way a canvas is executed. It's very easy to say those painting [00:16:00] were inspired by what I see what's happening in the region right now in Gaza and even let's say Ukrainia, but also especially here, and I can feel the energy that's around. There's one big entities and there's one smaller and there is a dominance about one on the left and one on the right. There's there is this dominance where. There is a conundrum about one person into another, it's a series of painting that led me to those two-person.
Tamara: It's interesting because one person has much more presence then the other person, figuratively.... 
Marwan Sahmarani: And the other one just has as something that is bigger,
Tamara: bigger, and more abstract. 
Marwan Sahmarani: And that come from not only individuality, but I think violence is something that is part of the creation of the universe the whole universe is created 
Tamara: by a violent act 
Marwan Sahmarani: A violent act and every human has this inside himself. Right. So I begin with a drawing. 
Tamara: Speaking with a drawing? 
Marwan Sahmarani: No that's why I was saying every [00:17:00] painting has its own stories, 
Tamara: What about the paintings that you've made about where you go and you are with nature with the sea. 
Tamara: You talk a lot about the sea and your relationship to Beirut to being here is very much also about the sea, and you looking at the sea, you being in the sea, the sea being almost a comfort, a protective layer, because it gives you a compass wherever you are in this country. 
Tamara: Can you tell us more about the series about being there? I mean, is it similar to Spain, to the mountain? 
Marwan Sahmarani: In fact it was. I've got this house next to the sea really like a 15 meter away. I thought in Lebanon I will only paint in Beirut. So because of the situation I had to run away and I lived for one year in front of the sea. And sometime, it's amazing how stuff comes to you when you need it, and this, this period was [00:18:00] after the explosion and after the revolution. 
 
Marwan Sahmarani: And I think I didn't want to paint the explosion. I didn't want to paint what's happened here. I think it's too much in front of us. There's nothing to paint about it. 
Tamara: So your studio is very close. I mean, we're looking now at the ports in front of us in fact, 
Marwan Sahmarani: and the whole studio went into blast. 
Marwan Sahmarani: So it was a tough moment. And I said to myself seeing the violence, it was too much here. I don't have anything to describe any more. And I found myself in front of the sea. It's like finding my self in front of the mountain, and I got to paint what was in front of me. And swimming is a big part of my life, I've being always swimming. 
Marwan Sahmarani: I love being in the sea, winter and summer. Just go and spend an hour, like right now in February, I'm going tomorrow. 
Marwan Sahmarani: Because sometimes it's good to change. And I think the [00:19:00] painting are, the, how we say the... it's a trace. It's more important than the geography. It's going to stay in my life. And I like to look back where I've been 20 years ago. In front and look at this at this painting. 
Tamara: Take you back to that moment 
Marwan Sahmarani: it was really a moment in front of the sea. I love being in the water. I love having the head in the water a lot. 
Tamara: Can you tell us a little bit more because you communicate this a lot in your series. You are able to somehow when looking at these paintings, you know, the blue is so immersive. That you are completely enveloped in it. It is literally like you are painting inside the sea. 
Marwan Sahmarani: But the thing is inside the sea and there is still me. At the end. It's me. It's not the sea. It's what I feel in the sea. And it's still an offload. It's just serene environment. And my entity is contained and it's a trace of me. It's like, it's very [00:20:00] calligraphic also. This is what I like in the Chinese painting. Just the white paper and the ink. And then how it's blending and it's the instant of the gesture. And here it's not, the mountain is just the blue area, the water that's surrounding me. And it's me, who is swimming in the sea or having one stroke, one form, one gesture in the painting. So.
Tamara: In a way, these paintings, because they are series and they are a progression. I mean, each painting technically you could say they look very similar to each other, but at the same time, each painting has a different movement.
Tamara: Yeah 
Marwan Sahmarani: each 
Tamara: painting 
Marwan Sahmarani: at the end, it's like taking a paper and then having a doodle or draw, you just put a little salt on a paper. 
Marwan Sahmarani: It's like a journal. So you put it here, you put the day, you put it the next morning. And each stroke has his own presence, but the [00:21:00] frame is the sea. When I was a kid the sea was on my right, and I love to see this horizon in Lebanon. Each of us have this depending where you're going from north to south. And I was six or seven and it makes me dream and dream, what's behind this horizon, and I had the chance to paint this horizon for you 
Tamara: but also the horizon that has such incredible change of color throughout the day, like a huge symphony. 
Marwan Sahmarani: So I did around maybe 50 painting about the sea, during the day, during the night, I painted in the night too. I did the same thing I did in Spain 12 years ago. Maybe it is an homage to myself when I was five and six to this questioning about the horizon. 
Marwan Sahmarani: Do you die after the horizon? 
Marwan Sahmarani: In fact, it's quite interesting because in a way, when you talk about the horizon, there's a flatness. People you know couldn't believe that it was round for a long [00:22:00] time. And in a way, what you're talking about with the falling is you see there's a flatness there And it's frightening, when I was a kid it was frightening. There is just this that is stopping everything. And now.
Tamara: Because after the horizon is death.
Marwan Sahmarani: That's what I felt when I was a kid. 
Marwan Sahmarani: And it's not about perfect. It's the fear of this horizon, it's like the breaststroke I do, I'm going to swim the whole thing, and I'm going to arrive at the end and during all this. It's like a . the fear of the ending. And it was nice being in front of the eyes. And for the first time in my life.
Marwan Sahmarani: I always dreamt to live in front of the sea. 
Tamara: Did it match your dream? 
Marwan Sahmarani: I could have pursued more. The only thing that I didn't have a lot of space to work, this constrained me a lot. I needed more space. I need a huge studio in front of the sea, like what I have in front of the mountain, I'm sure I would. My pictoral research would have been more, maybe it will come back. [00:23:00] You know, there's a painter really like who pushed this, Miquel Barcelo 
Marwan Sahmarani: He paint the sea and what's inside, what's outside, the creatures inside. And because he's living also in Spain, and his studio is in front of the sea. So I can understand his research about the depths of the water and in my practice about the sea.
Tamara: But let's go back for a second because you also talk a lot about wanting to come back or having that total freedom to paint like a child,
Marwan Sahmarani: I draw since I'm three years old and I'm sure every year. I remember when I was five there's this teacher who told my parents your kids only like to draw.. And then there was war, and I remember during war, my family has a collection of artists, say Degas, Monet, Manet... And I look at it very innocently, not knowing is it good or not good 
Tamara: Talking about art books?
Marwan Sahmarani: I didn't [00:24:00] understand anything, but I was just looking at them. innocently, without knowing but I continued drawing and drawing and drawing. And during school this is the only thing I like to do. Then when you go to art school, 
Tamara: Was that a struggle? 
Marwan Sahmarani: Horrible. No, no, it was good for that. No, when I was 18 they told me do whatever you do, but you know, that painting doesn't make money, you cannot live from it. But I did what I want, but I regretted I didn't do it much before with an education really an education of someone who guide me. When you're 18, you already formatted, it's like learning the piano at 18 or 19. It's very difficult.
Tamara: It's different because you started using your hands when you were three. So, people come to painting or to art, creativity, in different ways. It's theirs, there's no one journey. 
Marwan Sahmarani: There's no one journey, but I have this idealist journey of the pen, of the renaissance, before becoming painter.
Tamara: As an apprentice, in [00:25:00] an atelier or a.... 
Marwan Sahmarani: And they learned very, very young how to draw everything. So I have this Fantasma about it, not only the renaissance but I think every the whole history of art there's something very mystical about it and very romantic. And I wish I had it I wish I had it specially in the environment we lived during the war. There was nothing dreaming and poetic about it. 
Marwan Sahmarani: Maybe there was for other people. There was no escape. So my only escape was those book and the caucasian carpet that my father had on the floor, the abstraction of it. With the time I understand now, but before that, I didn't understand how those would do something completely abstract and very geometric and very a mathematical. And those crazy artists from the 20th century
Tamara: that really like spoke to you?
Marwan Sahmarani: He was an amazing drawer, Degas. I don't like it anymore, but then there was feminology with enough. He stuck in my head. 'Picasso also, I [00:26:00] never understood Picasso when I was a kid, why he did this blue period. And then he did this Cubist, I don't understand. Monet also impressed me a lot. His landscape is a outdoor painting. 
Tamara: Tell me, how did you react when you saw them live? When you went to a museum? For the first time and you saw a real Monet.
 
Marwan Sahmarani: When I moved from Lebanon in 1988, just after the war. To Paris was a Renaissance for myself. The first time. I remember even more impressive. It's not the painting, of course the painting, but the big thing that I remember when I entered the. 
Marwan Sahmarani: It was impressive. It was like a Renaissance for me, the power of the creation
Tamara: And that permanence which we struggle with here.
Marwan Sahmarani: We know Lebanon was almost erased, the rebuild, nothing that is left. 
Tamara: There is such an interesting archeological heritage. It's still being dug up. 
Marwan Sahmarani: [00:27:00] What's more interesting because I'm part of it right now. a collective conscious if I go to the Western, I don't feel anything anymore. It's like I drank the whole bottle and I'm satisfied with what I've seen. If I see a good moment there's more to it for me being nature. But in Lebanon, there is more to it in a way there is an unlimited connection with unconscious collective unconscious. That is so enriching for me. That is 3000 years. And I find that fascinating and I can feel it. 
Tamara: And that gives you energy to paint? 
Marwan Sahmarani: That's given me a drive to paint a lot. Drive and energy and and curiosity
Tamara: tell me something, I think you have had many different periods. Break down your art and organize it in periods and years, and you do refer to important dates as key moments, whether it was 12 years ago, when you first went to Spain or, you know, 2019, when you had to, of course there was a [00:28:00] dramatic events happening in Lebanon. And this is very much connected to what you're talking about tracing your existence, keeping a tab on things, but what were there certain moments when you had to take a break from painting? I see that you have worked with Clay, that you have worked with certain installations and they're beautiful. Can you tell us more about that? 
Tamara: I mean, they were an interruption from your practice. technically, but they are also part of your practice. 
Marwan Sahmarani: The connect from every medium is connect to the other. I don't think it's completely separated. I think sculpture practice is very small. I didn't have the opportunity to pursue it more. I need more means and the country doesn't give it to me. So I don't have the whole set up, but it's just a need. And sometime there's forms that I could not translate it into paper or into a painting. And I needed to create it. 
Tamara: [00:29:00] A 3-Dimensionality which by the way, it's very present in your painting. Your paintings, very textured, the brush strokes are very deep and very layered. And this is what's very interesting. There is this protrusion which also has a connection with the energy, the violence in a way. 
Tamara: Exactly. The sculpture are really related, I think was the budgie as a. this budgie shape there is this energy that I could only create within the medium of sculpting. If you talk about Giacometti, for example, he needed to find the existentially of every person inside his rectillian and he couldn't find it in the end. For me, it's a country. Just need to shape myself, my body or to go back to the form of what we are in the surrounding and the sculpture Is here to, it's breaks the universe [00:30:00] in a way. 
Tamara: It interrupts?
Marwan Sahmarani: Yeah. Maybe Fontana wanted to express this. 
Tamara: He had to do it actually by breaking the canvas in a sense or ripping it. 
Marwan Sahmarani: It's like an opening, I don't know how to express this. 
Tamara: Another layer. 
Marwan Sahmarani: A universe. You know, we say now we are really connected with. It's proof scientific proof and not only esoteric, there is many multiple universe and they're trying to. And the quantum physics and all this, in my practice, I can sense what's scientifically being proved. 
Tamara: Do you get into a trance when you paint, it's a very intense moment of presence when you are painting. And yet at the same time, you are lost in the painting. 
Marwan Sahmarani: Yeah, I think when you are in the present. All people who do meditation, you're completely in the present, there is no future. There is no past. And this is where I feel I'm good. And [00:31:00] my act of painting. It's only a translation of this moment. So every brush stroke is translating the present I'm living it in my life. So at the end, there's a painting. But I focused in the microcosm and sometimes it works, the painting is good. You don't know why. Maybe the present was very generous with me or sometime the painting needs to be strong. 
Tamara: And how do you know when you finished a painting?
Marwan Sahmarani: Every painter will tell you, you can feel it. There's nothing to explain. It's just finished. And sometime it's never finished, but I always give space to unfinish. So I've kept the painting. I try not to sign it directly because I don't want to be very optimistic and say, oh, this is a great painter. It's finished sometime couple of years ago or a couple of weeks ago, or it's unfinished, but I have the chance. Sometimes just finish.
Tamara: So let me ask you this, because talking [00:32:00] about the present, I mean it's a very liberating moment, the present, because it is supposed to be free from the past and the future. It's very grounding. 
Tamara: But you have such an interesting mixed heritage, you've talked about the different identities you've had and in a way that's the whole struggle, which has also come out on your paintings. I mean, over the years and perhaps arriving at a moment where you are just in front of a goddess, where there's a purification of all of this or a simplification of it. But can you tell us more when you talk about being a child and having the books of Degas and a Caucasian painting... I mean, you are an interesting mix of European, of Middle Eastern, how does it feed you? 
Marwan Sahmarani: I discover myself along the road, along the journey. It's like, you're in the middle of the forest all your life or even, I could say you swim. to the horizon. And you're getting there and you don't know which road you're taking, but you have to take a road [00:33:00] or in the water you have to swim against the current or in the sea. You know, if someone tells me you want to teach painting, tell me why don't you teach, I could not,. I'm still learning how to paint. I wish I had the confidence in myself and knowing what I'm doing. I've paint one subject and let's stick to it. And I think painting is so about myself. It's a mirror. It's just I'm myself. 
Marwan Sahmarani: Who's talking to myself and then understanding myself and especially in my identity. I had many have a mix of everything. 
Tamara: But it's very layered.
Marwan Sahmarani: Every period is related to my state. My journey in life, my questioning. My struggle. Whenever I find it, I move out and do something else because I'm doing it for myself. 
Tamara: You're authentic. You're being honest with yourself and that's. 
Marwan Sahmarani: I think it's like a choice. [00:34:00] It's just a journal that I'm writing. 
Tamara: And speaking of writing, do you have Any authors, any books that have been very important in your artistic journey?
Marwan Sahmarani: Yeah. Of course a lot of. writers has inspired me, I was inspired especially in my twenties mostly by Western writer, I really love Georges Bataille. 
Tamara: What do you love most about him?
Marwan Sahmarani: You know, like what I feel in front of a Caravaggio, the history of Caravaggio. I feel the same with bataille The whole questioning about their sexuality. 
Marwan Sahmarani: I liked So I really like the 3m. There is one book I really love. Mashonda wonder. Fantastic. He's inspired by Dante. I was inspired by this at one point in my life, because michelangelo was around me. 
Tamara: You mean you were communing with him?
Marwan Sahmarani: So I felt there was something about the violence scenes. And Dante they were similar, and Michelangelo has this issue about paradise and [00:35:00] hell. I love Spanish literature. Right now, I read this wonderful book. From Stephen's vague. This two years ago.
Marwan Sahmarani: I don't know if you read it. Spectacular, It resonate with me as a half Austrian, one third Austrian and his story as an artist. He killed himself, and he was a humanist, it's nice. How he tried to explain his feeling and his doubts about him as a writer and his journey. And his practice. During the first year when he wanted to be a writer, He felt himself is no confidence. So he decided to try translate all the big writer in German because he didn't, he didn't felt good enough to write. 
Tamara: Great. So I look forward to the next chapter of your writing, which you can also be writing on a canvas. 
Marwan Sahmarani: If I don't paint some type of stuff. Painting, just have a full of [00:36:00] sketchbooks
Tamara: incredible. So this is your time away from. 
Marwan Sahmarani: Time away from... sometimes I come back into painting. 
Tamara: How many of these do you have?
Marwan Sahmarani: Dozen it goes from abstraction and figuration to. Sometimes what I find very difficult I don't have it in front of me to translate it into a painting 
Tamara: immediately, because there's a need for an immediate expression 
Marwan Sahmarani: and sometime I go back to a drawing I did three, four years ago, I say, oh, maybe I should rework this little doodle. 
Tamara: So, really they're your companions. These notebooks.
Marwan Sahmarani: It's a trace of my journey. 
Tamara: Thank you Marwan. That was wonderful. 
[00:37:00]