Syrian artist Safwan Dahoul discusses one of his series of emotive paintings entitled ‘The Awakening’ — a continuation of the ‘Dream’ series he began in the late Eighties.
The theme of my work has always been the human condition. A human, as they say, endures everything — sadness, happiness, longing, and the dream. I’ve said that I’m somewhat like a person who holds an invisible camera, capturing the human moments of a person. In the end, this person could be me. With this camera, I would like to document, in all possibilities, the life of this person.
I feel that one of the rights of an artist is to defend a thought he wishes to express without justifying it, even though others may disagree with him. Many people have (pointed out) that I don’t color my paintings. A person is the (product) of his environment — whether geographical, political or social. And in recent years, I haven’t been able to paint with colors. In my opinion, the reason for that is that I want to be a true observer of my surroundings as a Syrian and an artist, and there has been no space for color in the period I’m living in. As time went by, colors became duller in my mind.
