Fadi El Chamaa

“I am fuelled by human experience and the relationship between humans, nature, and animals and the impact they have on us:  the scars and bruises they leave and the beauty they produce. My paintings represent abstract and figurative states of being; the many personalities we develop along the way with their infinite emotional landscape. With my wooden sticks, I frantically and repetitively apply thick paint on the canvas, leaving heavy energised strokes.”

Short Biography

Self-taught Commercial Creative and Artist. Lebanese, born in Beirut, 1960.

During his early youth (1974) Fadi played with photography and spent most of his time in the darkroom. Instead of being out taking photographs and developing them he preferred creating his own images using light and chemicals. This hobby developed into a passion of making things out of any reaction or interaction by interweaving techniques of darkroom process with painting.

In the 90’s he was invited to Apeldoorn, Netherlands in the labs of Royal Talens to learn advanced theory and practice of pigments and binders. This unique, alchemistical knowledge provided his entry to academia.  In institutions such as Beirut University College, Lebanese University, American University of Beirut, and Académie Libanaise Des Beaux-Art, he taught on subjects pertaining to importance of technology in the creative process.

He participated in many collective art shows in Lebanon during the 90’s and exhibited in 1994 in one of the first art installations in Beirut; a 22 meter painting on the floor for people to walk on (Forum Art Fair)

In 1997 He was offered a position of ‘Creative’ in the first and largest adverting agency in the world, J. Walter Thompson Beirut. He traveled the Arab world to live and work as a creative and artist with JWT in 8 Arab cities and achieved high recognition in the field and won numerous creativity Awards (Cannes Lions, Dubai Lynx, DA&D, Clio…)

During all these experimental years he stopped exhibiting but created a huge body of work.

After 15 years of exploring the Arab world he decided to come back to Beirut in 2014 and dedicate his life to art.