سيرة ذاتية

Mohamad Salim Jaber was born in 1936 in the village of Bwarij, above the wide open stretch of the Beqaa Valley. That landscape stayed with him for life. The light, the dust, the shifting colors of the fields and sky were not just things he saw, they became the foundation of how he understands the world. He did not come from an environment that offered him the luxury of becoming an artist. There were no studios, no formal path, no clear encouragement. What he had was instinct. As a child, he was drawn to shapes, to the way shadows fall, to how a simple scene could carry feeling. He began with whatever materials he could find, learning by doing, failing, repeating, and slowly building a language that was his alone.

His early work stayed close to what he knew. Landscapes, familiar places, moments from daily life. But over time, something shifted. The paintings stopped being about what was in front of him and started becoming about what he felt. Color took on weight. Forms began to break apart and reassemble. The work moved into something less literal and more personal. You can still see traces of nature in his paintings, but they are no longer direct. They appear as fragments, as echoes. A rock, a cloud, a movement in the sand, but never fully explained. He leaves space for the viewer to recognize something without being told what it is. He was not shaped by institutions. He remained largely self taught, aside from a short period of guidance under the artist Haidar Hamwi. What he developed came from years of persistence, long hours alone with the canvas, and a need to keep pushing beyond what he already knew how to do.

The civil war marked him deeply. During those years, his work grew heavier. There is a tension in those paintings that does not need explanation. You feel it immediately. Uncertainty, loss, and silence all found their way into his compositions. But even then, he did not paint without hope. There is always some opening in the work. A light, a figure, a quiet suggestion that something endures. His career was never built on visibility or constant exhibition. He showed his work when the opportunity came. Baghdad in 1985. Chtaura in 1988. Much later, Beit Beirut in 2019. In recent years, his paintings reached audiences through digital exhibitions abroad, including collaborations with Mad’s Gallery and the International Center for Transitional Justice, where one of his works, created in response to the Beirut port explosion, was recognized and awarded.

What defines him most is not where he showed his work, but the fact that he never stopped. Even when life demanded pauses, he always returned to painting. Since 2019, during one of the hardest periods Lebanon has faced, he became even more committed. He paints every day. Not out of routine, but out of necessity. For him, dreams are not decoration or escape. Some cannot be explained. Others become a kind of shelter when reality is too heavy to carry. This is how he speaks about them, quietly, without trying to define them too much.

At 85, he is still dreaming through his work. Still putting those fragments onto canvas. There is a sense that each painting carries something unfinished, something still searching. He hopes these works will travel, not just physically, but into other people’s lives. That somewhere, someone will recognize a feeling in them. The artist never painted to impress or to follow a path. He painted because it was the only honest way he could respond to what he has lived through. And he is still doing it. 

Mohamad Jaber does not paint to explain himself. He paints because it is the only way he knows how to hold on to what matters.