La Revue du Liban
No 3924, du 22 au 29 Novembre 2003

The Watercolours of Joseph Matar: Poetry steeped in Beauty

Without leaving aside his mega-composition of 300m2 on which he is working at present, Matar speaks of his delight in presenting to the view “an eternal spring with some notes of joy, of happiness and of hope”, in a collection of works expressing the various aspects of his identity.

Watercolours are a material which do not allow any compromise. This cannot be repeated too often, for one must insist on the idea that watercolour is learnt as an art full of snares. Its intensity and plasticity are the result of the coincidence of the right moment and the right gesture.

With this material, the blob of water is an inner world, blending, which encloses also a razor-like frontier. What is more, it is the element which, once mastered, allows one to add those luminous shades that give a work all its pictorial dimension and allow the dreams of its creator to transcribe the gleaming lights of his “visions”. What a joy it is to admire yet again these paintings!

With the tip of his brush the artist captures the glow and by the magic of the liquid medium he reveals it on paper. In giving all its intensity to the splash of colour, in playing on the original tones and the diluted contrasts, he expresses his synthetic vision of Nature, synonymous with poetry and dreams.

AN ARTIST IN QUEST OF PERFECTION

Enchanted by the precision of the picture and the mastery of the coloured pigments, let us follow step by step this lover of beauty in the masterpiece as he proceeds in his quest for perfection.
As in the pages of a book, we follow with our eyes these amber landscapes, these moistened skies, these infinite spaces, a veritable hymn to Lebanon.

Juggling with his palette, organizing his scenes like musical symphonies, he evokes the land which is his and translates it on paper without any betrayal.

This Lebanon he loves, in which he has his roots, inspires him with its glow, its spirit and its power of evocation.

Matar, an artist enthralled by spirituality, expresses this preoccupation by means of his landscapes.

His work transports us into a universe with the vibrations of music, showing us Nature in its most harmonious aspects.

In the greater part of his paintings one finds an aesthetic research which opens onto a world such as that which existed in the first morning of creation. Everything here speaks of the serenity, the richness of the soil and the idyllic vision of the villages. In these landscapes there is no human figure, not even the woman who so often haunts his oils, as though the artist wished to reveal only the beauty of a protected Nature, by the use of a magician’s wand.

Here one beholds a pictorial poetry impregnated with beauty, perfectly executed and full of a vivacity soberly mastered.

Indeed, who better than Joseph Matar knows how to observe and to appreciate the change of the seasons, rendering a forest path in autumn all flame and fire, a countryside all exaltation of colour, an undergrowth all trunks of trees with upward thrust blending with the abounding foliage?
Matar has chosen not only the facility of his craft but also its sincerity when faced with the motifs and above all when faced with the rural and woodland scenes where his hand works marvels in decoding the fugitive treasures bestowed by Nature.

Only the poor of spirit protest against the bold blazing tints that come with the spring and with autumn and that inspire his palette with such generosity.

Sonia Nigolian