Rola Abu Darwish tells Zalfa Halabi about her artistic intentions

From the opening of Foreign Bodies, 2022.

ZH: Tell us about yourself and your formation as an artist, how did you get into expressing yourself through painting?

RD: I’ve always been into art and painting but I’ve only started doing it professionally in 2015. I quit my job and I studied art professionally at the Lebanese University. I did a Masters and after that I started doing it seriously as my thing. It’s always been what I wanted to do but life led me in another direction. I studied computer science, which is very far from it but I dabbled in art and I did graphic design. I always felt left out when I saw other artists and thought to myself “I should be doing something, I should be doing something.” When the chance came I did and I realized how different it is to have formal training, versus just doing it for fun. You look at things differently, in a more serious way, or a more inquisitive, and critical way, not just doing something that is pretty. No, you think more, you look at other art differently. It’s a great way to explore myself and other works. You always find ways to do more, you learn through the process and the ideas, you build on things from before. It’s a journey, not just making or doing something and that’s it. Sometimes things come up that aren’t planned, and you just look at that and say, “why did this happen?” You question it and take it forward. 

ZH: What inspires you to create your work? If you were to describe to us your process, how does it start? Is it an idea, or something you look at, something you want to translate?

RD: Everything. But mostly, probably… It comes from an urge in me that I should do something, an itchiness to do something. Then, I have a vague final image or mood or feeling or emotion, or something very formal and anal, or a feeling that I want to do or express. Not of how it will be, but of a starting point. 

Or sometimes, something happens that really shakes me - for example I read something, or have an encounter, and I take it as a starting point. There is always a starting point, sometimes from real life, sometimes very abstract. However, I always make a point to start from there. When I do that, I do that to be very open, and see where it takes me. On top of that, it's the process of maintaining the idea I have in my head, and being very open in the process to see how to translate or prepare it. 

So with my new pieces, I started with the vague idea that I want to do something inside and something outside. So I started with a very simple sketch with the inside, and very simply just adding the corner. And I did both small sketches at the same time to highlight the differences between them. And then I quickly translated the sketch onto the big canvas. I usually start working on the floor, but this time, it was directly on the wall. I’m usually open there too, but I try to stick to the original sketch, because I like making something small and translating it into something big - something has changed and it’s interesting. 

ZH: Do you always work from sketches?

RD: Sometimes I work from sketches, but it’s very basic, the outline. Actually, most of the time. When I don’t, it gets harder to finish the piece fully. In terms of composition and technicalities. 

So when I’m filling the canvas out, I’m always adding things. I try to repeat some motifs from before, and welcome new ones. When I like something, I try to use it on a different piece. I always like to take elements from one piece to another, take some old elements and put them in a new piece, and explore them all. 

ZH: What are some repeated motifs or symbols?

RD: A lot of eyes. And then suddenly I started to have a lot of creatures on my canvases, so these creatures have mouths, and they’re like, communicating with each other. These are some motifs and symbols. I have a lot of dots, dashes and scratches, textures. Circles. I’m really into openings, and gaps, gaping. Gaping holes. Openings. Layers. Things behind things. Hidden things. 

ZH: What draws you to these kinds of motifs? 

RD: I don’t know. I mean, the formal ones like dots and scratches, I can’t say. I could say, maybe, every time I work on something, I use them and it feels natural. I feel they’re a good language for me to express myself with. The others, like the eyes and the mouths, it’s like someone communicating with you, looking at you with shame, and all that other stuff. 

ZH: To me, I’ve known your work for a while, so I see the inclusion of repeated motifs. It’s a different way of handling it, but it’s very recognizably yours. I see a lot of inspiration from very specific artists, like Yayoi Kusama for example. She has her own world, and in a sense, you do too. She works a lot with patterns and repetition. I see that in your work but in a different way. Is her work something you consider when you are creating or is it a coincidence?

RD: Coincidence, but also I love her work and I follow her work. But I don’t look at something and say I want to do something like this. I love the otherworldly part of it. The patterns, just simply the formal aesthetic part of it, when you see color on color. I like it when I look at a work and feel like, this thing that you feel even before thinking of the concept or anything. 

ZH: So it’s the feeling you take from certain experiences that you want to replicate through your work that resembles you and your language. 

RD: When people are looking at a painting, I would like them to want to look more, and enjoy looking. It’s like when you go into nature and you’re like, “wow, the flowers! Look at this! Look at that!” And you get lost in this other world… Not just look at it and go, “she means this,” or, “she means that,” and they leave. This is why I like to work with a lot of details, going from place to place. For the eyes to wander, to really look around in a painting. 

ZH: It’s true. You have a lot of details, even though you work in an abstract way, and the canvases are large, so you see more. But at the same time, there’s a lot of details and you can’t really keep your eye in one place. 

RD: Engulfing. And I really care about the flow in a painting, the way the eye travels. 

ZH: You were saying earlier that you draw inspiration from your background - does that inspire you in any way? 

RD: Not directly… like not from my background and directly from real life, but definitely from my experiences, from my emotions, from things I’ve seen..

ZH: I’m wondering more technically. So you studied computer science and then you worked as a graphic designer. I’m sure the formal experience - did it drive your work?

RD: It didn’t. At the beginning, it was really driving my work in graphic design. And it took me a lot of struggle to break through, maybe it took me 4 years before I started finding it - because I didn't really know how to look at art. Even now, if i take a graphic design project, it’s so different how your brain works, so it was really hard to break. Now, I can't go back to work, because it’s a different way of thinking. 

ZH: I remember you used to have more visible characters, or people. You were very graphic and illustrative. So you broke away from that, and went into more abstraction. 

RD: That’s where I was happier, in that place. And now recently, I am including more characters, and I’m always scared of falling back into the illustrative phase, but I’m enjoying it right now, how I'm mixing. You don’t have to shy from the characters. But it was hard in university, because they only taught you through their opinions and they were really against it, you just have to really find your own voice after that. But I think I broke free from my background, but of course my work is always informed by me and my taste in things. 

ZH: What is your taste? Other artists? 

RD: I love Louise Bourgeois, but she is so different from me. She’s someone I could never be like. I really respect her. I feel like she’s a really strong person, and I don’t see myself as such a strong person. 

ZH: She used very strong themes, it’s very intense but very tender, and I see that in you. Maybe not directly, but I can see how she inspires you. 

RD: I like this paradox. For the smaller piece, I started working with very tender, dreamy colors, but then I used a lot of scratchy blacks. I like things that are not direct. 

ZH: Attraction and repulsion. 

RD: Yes, and contrast. Because I feel like this is life - you have very tender thoughts, and romantic things, but then you have death and killing. For me, life is really morbid and sad, but I'm always happy and smiling. 

ZH: I remember your final year project, it had a lot of the same elements, but it was more intense because it had a lot of black and white. You moved away from light colors. 

RD: Firstly, I was using a simple, simple palette so I could really explore the forms, with composition and everything, without the color. The color I was using was values, like different shades of gray instead of using different colors. Then I started using color because I wanted an extra element which was extra space in the painting. Before, my paintings were like one carpet, like one big pattern. It had a lot of elements, but they were flat so I wanted to break up the painting with spaces, and I started using blues. And now, very recently, I’m using much more colors. 

ZH: That’s why I’m intrigued. 

RD: Yes, it’s exploration. And I feel it brought a whole new, different layer to the work. 

ZH: What kind of layer? Spaces?

RD: Besides the spaces, the colors next to each other. Besides the elements being near each other as well, the colors themselves are rich. It’s richer. The richer, the better. Sometimes I see oil paintings, and I go, “wow! Maybe I should be working with oil…” Everything is richer, there is richness in the elements, in the colors, in the flowing, everything. And richness in the material itself! Maybe acrylic itself is flat, you know what I mean? Since I'm striving to create another world, the richer, the better. The deeper, the better. 

ZH: You’ve mentioned a lot that you’re into different spaces, different places - can you tell us more about that? 

RD: Yes, because I believe this is what you do in a painting. It’s creating a new space.

ZH: So the spaces that we see in the paintings do not necessarily exist yet. When someone is looking at your painting, I know you don’t want someone to see something very literal, but where do you aim to take them? 

RD: It’s just that, I just want them to pause and explore. When they explore the space visually, and you walk around a painting, it’s like you are pausing and entering a different world, and then you’re coming out of it. It’s just this experience, this sensual experience from the aesthetic perspective. 

ZH: I remember your artist statement, and you work from the past, you said you like to explore some kind of emotional landscapes. So it’s kind of a real place, but at the same time, it’s not real, and there are some elements that are real, like the eyes and the lips, something that’s very visible. But at the same time, the whole thing only exists in the painting. 

RD: It’s because it’s coming from a real person and a real place, which is me. Plus, when the viewer is looking at it, they’re also relating it to their own reality. I like to blur between reality and what is not considered reality. For me, this is what we can do in art, not really anywhere else.