Untitled Pink

"Untitled Pink," is a heavily encrusted vibrant pink painting in which carefully organized bits of different colors, shells, and fanciful imagery add up to a vibrant, pulsating field. Each of Nahas' paintings is made from pumice, which the artist arrays on the canvas in small clumps and paints in bright tones of acrylic. He uses actual starfish and casts of starfish as beds for the free-form pumice on top. In "Untitled Pink," the starfish forms are nearly invisible, deeply embedded in the work. Like many postmodern painters, Nahs plays with a sense of painting as bas-relief, blurring the boundaries between painting and sculpture. Nahas' painterly abstractions manifest sensual and emotional density, while the technique of allover painting gives expressive life to his canvases. The paintings may evoke underwater scenes, coral reefs, or lava flow. Nabil Nahas has always drawn on a wide range of esthetic philosophies, influenced in part by his Lebanese and Egyptian upbringing combined with his Yale education.