PRESENTATION: Sumayyah Samaha-The Last Voyage

Sumayyah Samaha, My 2nd Voyage, 2020, Oil and mixed media on canvas, 121.92 x 274.32 cm., 48 x 108 in., © Sumayyah Samaha, Courtesy the artist and Leila Heller GallerySumayyah Samaha is an Arab American artist working and living in Soho, New York City. She was born in 1939 in Shweir, Lebanon and came to the United States on a scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh. Samaha received her MA from the University of Pittsburgh and BA from the American University of Beirut. Upon the completion of graduate school, she moved to New York City and decided not to go back to Lebanon. She was seeking a freer and more exciting life.

By Efi MIchalarou
Photo: Leila Heller Gallery Archive

Sumayyah Samaha’s identity above all is that of an artist. Her method of work is abstract. She uses different media but her passion is for oil painting. When she is creating her work, she follows her natural flow. Working on paper has worked as a vehicle for her to move to a new ideas and to a new body of work. Over the years she built an extensive vocabulary with which she weaves her visual story. In her new paintings and works on paper, that are on show in her solo exhibition “The Last Voyage”, Sumayyah Samaha uses oil, charcoal, and watercolor to tell her visual story. With each image, her goal is always to find harmony between these different media and the varied abstract forms that emerge from her playful, gestural approach. Larger works, like “My 2nd Voyage, 2020”, may hang in Samaha’s live/work studio for months before they are complete. While sweeping, gestural lines in charcoal arc across canvases, Samaha paints, scrapes, erases and repaints the remaining surface with close attention as she develops an interplay between defined and undefined forms. Swaths of flat gradients are beside and behind free-form shapes, all floating upon a white background. Color, which abounds in Sahama’s work, is determined by the type of light she seeks to realize. Samaha moves back and forth freely across her surfaces, using a vocabulary informed by an artistic career spanning 40+ years and a range of mediums—oil painting, charcoal, watercolor, paper making, ceramics, sculpture, pastels, and installation. She describes this body of work as “free, stream of consciousness painting.”

Photo: Sumayyah Samaha, My 2nd Voyage, 2020, Oil and mixed media on canvas, 121.92 x 274.32 cm., 48 x 108 in., © Sumayyah Samaha, Courtesy the artist and Leila Heller Gallery

Info: Leila Heller Gallery, 17 East 76th Street (off Madison Avenue), New York, NY, U.S.A., Duration: 25/7-31/8/2023, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.leilahellergallery.com/

Sumayyah Samaha, My 3rd Voyage, 2022, Oil and mixed media on canvas, 121.92 x 274.32 cm., 48 x 108., © Sumayyah Samaha, Courtesy the artist and Leila Heller Gallery
Sumayyah Samaha, My 3rd Voyage, 2022, Oil and mixed media on canvas, 121.92 x 274.32 cm., 48 x 108., © Sumayyah Samaha, Courtesy the artist and Leila Heller Gallery

 

 

Sumayyah Samaha, A Universe, 2019, Mixed media on paper, 55.88 x 76.2 cm., 22 x 30 in., © Sumayyah Samaha, Courtesy the artist and Leila Heller Gallery
Sumayyah Samaha, A Universe, 2019, Mixed media on paper, 55.88 x 76.2 cm., 22 x 30 in., © Sumayyah Samaha, Courtesy the artist and Leila Heller Gallery

 

 

Sumayyah Samaha, My World, 2019, Oil and mixed media on canvas, 91.44 x 243.84 cm., 36 x 96 in., © Sumayyah Samaha, Courtesy the artist and Leila Heller Gallery
Sumayyah Samaha, My World, 2019, Oil and mixed media on canvas, 91.44 x 243.84 cm., 36 x 96 in., © Sumayyah Samaha, Courtesy the artist and Leila Heller Gallery

 

 

Sumayyah Samaha, Lines and Forms XX, 2017, Oil and charcoal on canvas 91.44 x 121.92 cm., 36 x 48 in., © Sumayyah Samaha, Courtesy the artist and Leila Heller Gallery
Sumayyah Samaha, Lines and Forms XX, 2017, Oil and charcoal on canvas 91.44 x 121.92 cm., 36 x 48 in., © Sumayyah Samaha, Courtesy the artist and Leila Heller Gallery