Sketches

The studies comprised in the work of Joseph Matar are so many that they are not easily catalogued. Joseph Matar passes whole days and nights, drawing and making tentative sketches with pencils, pastels, pen-and-ink or ball pens. Studies, researches and outlines all seem part of the air he breathes but in fact are fundamental to his investigations. He draws with the same facility that he writes.

The ideas repeated in dimensional shape and conceived in lines, forms and ensembles, all the paintings of Joseph Matar, are executed through a series of studies, compositions and variations. The poems composed by the artist are developed in the same way. Everything begins with a study, a line, a sketch, the infrastructure of every work. These studies are greatly varied. The compositions of human forms, landscapes, historical themes, boats, portraits, still-lifes of every kind, in all these the language of lines reaches its climax.

A line flows from his fingers like water, an outline full of character which sums up how the artist conceives the form, as a communication to be drawn or painted. This is the advance plan which is to express the thrust, the foundations, the conceptions, the rhymes and the broad outlines, in fact the unity of the work. Any study by Joseph Matar is vibrant and sings, addressing itself to the soul and foretelling the future masterpiece. The studies themselves are full of movement, of life and of light.

LebanonArt – Editorial