“Synthesizing the visual languages of abstraction and figuration, Jabbour creates vastly beguiling paintings that evoke the joys and struggles of a life lived between worlds.”
Henry Jabbour welcomes us to a richly coloured world of pastoral reverie and lyrical contemplation. These evocative paintings contain images of small and intimate moments heavy with personal significance. Expressed in a flamboyant welter of exuberantly-applied paint, they vibrate with dynamic energy and creative enthusiasm.
Jabbour is, above all, a colourist. He deploys his palette for maximal optical effect. Free from the academic demands of observed representation, he explores a full range of spectral opportunity. This artist delights in the combinations and contrasts of burnt oranges, flaming reds, cool cerulean blues, acid greens, citrus yellows and intense opulent violets.
The paintings are peopled with schematic figures. They are located in impressionistic, dreamlike landscapes, described by animated and graphic brushwork. Solitary, or in couples, these vestigial and allusive characters follow daily routines: they walk, stand and sit as examples of the everyday. Planted and remodelled within shimmering fields and veils of transforming paint, they enter a more intense pictorial space, which hints at spiritual elevation. They are transfigured by the act of painting.
Jabbour's paintings are a feast of coruscating texture. His profound attachment to the materiality of the medium is expressed in the sumptuous colour spread in gestural coagulations across the surface of his canvasses. This trademark impasto is formed by smear, clump and cluster of viscid, buttery oil paint applied by brush, knife and rag. This palpable physicality is almost a subject in itself.
Lush and lively method makes for a hyper-expressive setting, where the artist can locate his scenarios of tenderness and pause. The various protagonists, surrounded by intimations of fecundity and abundance, inhabit a natural world, subject to Jabbour's excited aesthetic heightening. He identifies intensity in the familiar, existential joy in the considered moment and sensual pleasure in the art of both making, and experiencing, a picture.
