Lebanon-series by Liz Strick
These four weeks had a tremendous impact on me and my art, and it was especially apparent upon my return when I started to revisit my experiences.
Reason for the project
After the recent war in Lebanon I revisited the country. The joyful birth of my second grandchild, Yasmin, is what brought me back to Beirut, but during my stay I was also able to visit the South of the country as far as the Litani River. These four weeks had a tremendous impact on me and my art, and it was especially apparent upon my return when I started to revisit my experiences. I was able to learn a lot about the Lebanese people and their culture. Their hospitality and strong personalities have made a long-lasting impression on me.
Witnessing some of the recent tremendous damages of war, the pain this has caused and the ongoing political instabilities have all added to my desire to try and put some of my feelings onto canvas. That is how the Lebanon series started. I’d like to see it as a small tribute to a nation and country that has lived through so many difficult and painful years and yet they have always come through with their heads held high.
Recently a friend donated some old used canvasses to me. Would I like to over paint them, reuse them and turn them into new works of art? The thought proved an interesting experience and certainly a big challenge as it would involve incorporating old layers of paint into my own new compositions. An experience not totally alien to me, as I usually like to begin with a blank canvas by adding some random colours to get me going. It certainly proved to be even more of a total liberation as some of the underlying colours clearly set me off into a new colour scheme. Warm and strong like the Lebanese people.
One downside to this method of overpainting is that it sometimes shows up slight imperfections because of the already-existing, sometimes thick, layers of paint on the canvas. At the same time they give life to the work.
The paintings
