Flowers

A flower! What grace, what ethereal transparency! Its life lasts only a morning, a composition of both artistry and reason. Flowers must be treated after direct observation and committing to memory, which supposes composition, study of lines and of movement, integrating the depths in the work and pouring out generously all the kinds of light in one’s soul. Here is ephemeral nature which is all charm and grace. Several works showing flowers are to be found in this corner, anemones, sunflowers, cyclamen and so on. From a dark background flowers spring out, all flashes of light and color, sometimes in a monochrome of transparent liquid tints.

Joseph Matar has treated every kind of subject, portraits, landscapes, events, nudes and sacred themes, but has lingered long over flowers. Are they not picturesque and attractive, and a temptation for an artist? His flowers are poems, written with love in plastic material, modeled, molded, full of life, light and movement. The blossom of almond or peach trees has life running within like blood ‘neath the skin.

Flowers are a subject that he portrays from time to time with pleasure, creating several versions of an arrangement, for they are symphonies, the ring of music, with presence in space and above all in time.

William Matar