The phlegmatic French-Lebanese painter, David Daoud betrays his silence and reserve as he reveals himself to The New Eastern politics Art and Culture Contributor, Christiane Waked during a heart-to-heart discussion.
C.W: David you are a citizen of the world, you have lived in the Middle East, Africa and Europe, can you please give us a brief about your background?
D.D: As you know Christiane, both our generations knew the Lebanese war since there is almost 10 year’s difference between us. I was born in 1970 in Lebanon and as the war started to take its toll, my parents and myself left to Gabon in Africa where my father started his own business.
Years later, we came back to Lebanon after there were several years of respite but the war was engaged again and my parents left once more to Gabon and left me in a board school, a wound that was never healed, one of a child that was abandoned to his own destiny.
I was 14 when my father passed away, that same year I went alone to live with my brother who was doing his studies in Paris.
C.W: What did the solitude that was forced to you during your childhood bring to you as an artist?
D.D: It brought me pain and isolation, two fuels that never ceased to nurture my imagination. You know Christiane, we discussed prior to this interview about how our childhood narcissist wounds can become gifts if we have the courage to go deep and explore them. Being abandoned by my parents became to me a source of inspiration because I left my shell to build something through art instead of destroying my soul.
C.W: In what way living in Paris was a different and more burgeoning experience to you as an artist?
D.D: I acquired more techniques and a know how during my studies in “Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs” and as I graduated I was more focused on being a sculptor rather a painter.
After my divorce, I lacked a space to sculpt so I turned more and more to painting and it kind of grew with me and I started to see myself more as a painter than a sculptor but I still love sculpting.
C.W: What are the materials that you are using these days to paint and who are the contemporary painters that influence your work? Do you have a signature style?
D.D: I am using all sorts of materials, it depends on the painting but I work mostly with aquarelle, ink and oil. I love painting with oil because it gives a soul to things because I search for a meaning in my art.
As for who influences my work, I never was really influenced by anyone but I love Picasso, the French painter, Pierre Soulages and the French-Chinese painter, Zao Wou-Ki.
As for my signature style, I want to say impressionist because of what my art inspires but I would rather say that I am a contemporary expressionist.
C.W: Your paintings evoke certain homesickness, nostalgia to a place or a state of being. Am I right or is this my own interpretation of my feelings through your work? Also why is there a recurrent sacred theme that comes frequently in your art through the Christ image?
D.D: It is true that my art is nostalgic and melancholic. I always seem to miss a place and want to travel to an elsewhere that’s why I like to paint landscapes. Dreamers do that as for the melancholic part, it is a sadness that never left me and that I gave a sense to as an adult.
Regarding the sacred theme, it is a sort of a spiritual retreat but I find myself more while painting landscapes. The colors that I use are obscure and mysterious and they resemble my personality. Sometimes I paint with more bright colors and I guess it comes from the period when I lived in the colorful Africa.
C.W: Who are the art galleries that showed your art and what are the prices that you won so far?
D.D: My paintings were exposed recently in “Exode” gallery in Achrafieh, Lebanon. It was very emotional for me to go back to my homeland and interact with the public in Arabic. I will participate in September in Beirut Art Fair and I would love to expose my paintings in Dubai.
Several galleries and museums in France also displayed my work, among them, “Le Musée de Pontoise” in Paris.
I won several awards, among them “Le Prix de la Fondation de France, le prix Frédéric Carfort » as well as « le Prix du Palais des Congrès ».
C.W : Whose art you like the most among the middle eastern artists?
D.D: I like Ayman Baalbaki’s work and all the painters who exposed in Agial Art Gallery but mostly Samia Saffiedine.
I also love the Lebanese painters during the 30’s and the 50’s and some work of Armenian painters unfortunately I don’t recall their names.
C.W: Last but not least, the famous Russian composer, Tchaikovsky spoke about his mental illness and how he found beauty amid depression and the wreckage of the soul, any last words in that regard?
D.D: Each artist is haunted by something. All the artists whether they are painters, musicians, poets, have a duality in their souls that pushes them to create. Take Delacroix or Van Gogh for instance, their demons pushed them to offer the world their pain in the most beautiful ways. When I read the letters that Mozart wrote to his father, my soul was moved to the core as I lost my father in a young age and I still search for him among my paintings.
Christiane Waked is a former Press Attaché of the French Embassy to the UAE (2010-2015) also worked as linguist and analyst in the French Interior Ministry (2005-2008)
