ELIE BOU ZEIDAN
Lebanese painter Elie Bou Zeidan’s landscapes, still-lifes, and portraits display a French Rococo influence, but they also resonate with the visu-
The Marina Oil on Canvas 18”x21.5”
al riches which surrounded him growing up in the farming region of Bekaa. His education took place first in war-torn Lebanon and then the countryside of France, where he was able to devote himself to his artistic development.
Bou Zeidan’s art resides in capturing the understated drama in scenes of quietude: His rendering of the heat of bare rocks and the ripples of seawater, the sly spilling of a rowboat’s color onto wave tips or the black of a shoreline cut by masts. There is a confidence to his works, as he points out what happens when light and water and land converge. Elie Bou Zeidan has also painted religious works and French building façades, and has been living in Paris for 15 years, where he works in pastels, Chinese ink, and oil on linen canvas, or wood. Website: http://www.eliii.com
VALENTINA SANINA
Valentina Sanina describes her work as “human art for human lives”—a description whose simplicity belies the depth of meaning behind it.
Married to the seemingly straightforward façades of the subjects of her oils and acrylics are pathways inviting investigations of their psyches: a masked reveler seems hidden from herself; a harpist’s music bears her up as she plays, stirring the boughs of
Carnival - Smile
Acrylic on Canvas 24”x 16”
a tree. The romantic tradition upon which Sanina draws and her gentle, delicate use of color means that a painting portraying a dark psychological nook might find a home in a brightly-lit nursery (alongside books of fairy tales whose deeper meanings are far too mature for children).
Born in Ukraine, Sanina was formally educated in the Soviet Union, where she became a celebrated muralist and was elected a fellow of the prestigious Art Society of the former U.S.S.R. Her work has been published and exhibited throughout the United States and as far away as Japan. Website: http://www.artmine.com/ArtistPage/Valentina_Sanina.aspx