The NH Mirror

 Marilene Sawaf

artist

By Suzanne D'Amato

Marilene Sawaf’s painting style is a patchwork quilt of her favorite things: Eastern and Western art and architecture, nature, fantasy, childhood memories and mixed mediums.

The thread weaving the quilt together is her affinity for bright colors. Sawaf carefully pieces together and tweaks these elements to create her unique evolving style.

Sawaf, who recently moved to Hollis from Nashua, is best known for her “stained-glass women” paintings. This collection of elongated female figures is inspired from her imagination, as well as from an enormous two-story stained-glass window and other objets d’art that, as a young girl, Sawaf admired in her grandmother’s richly decorated mansion in Alexandria, Egypt.

To achieve the luminous effect of stained glass, Sawaf combines mediums – oil, gouache, acrylic and ink – on different background materials. The images she introduces include flowers, medieval-tapestry and oriental-carpet designs, Persian and European art, Indian illustrations and impressionistic landscapes of New England.

“I mix everything I like – everything with bright colors. I especially like medieval art,” Sawaf said. “At museums, I always go to the medieval exhibits. I like the glossiness and purity of the colors.

“The whole mixture makes my paintings,” added Sawaf, who often wins awards in juried competitions for her “women” paintings because of her unusual style.

Sawaf’s career began 30 years ago by painting impressionistic landscapes of New England’s lush countryside – still a favorite subject for her. With painting classical portraiture, Sawaf’s newest genre, she mixes her style with realism. She also sets aside brushes and paints to create colorful geometric jewelry out of polymer clay.

Perhaps Sawaf’s art reflects her background – a mosaic of cultural experiences. Of Syrian-Lebanese descent, Sawaf was born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt, until her family fled the country during the 1950s to escape an erupting socialist revolution. Her family then settled in Milan, Italy, for eight years, until her father, an engineer, became unemployed. Next, Sawaf’s family relocated to Beirut. Lebanon used to be part of Syria and was offering Lebanese citizenship to refugees like her family.

“Living in Beirut was nice until the civil war started in 1975,” recalled Sawaf, who, at the time, was earning a university degree in interior design and architecture. To escape the political turmoil, Sawaf in 1980 followed her then-fiancé (and later, husband) to the United States to settle in Nashua.

Sawaf was widowed in 1990 and had two small children at the time – ages 4 and 7.

“I’d always wanted to paint, and that’s when I started painting landscapes,” she said. “As a single mother, I wanted to be home with my kids.”

The flip-side of being a full-time artist for Sawaf is marketing her paintings and jewelry. She exhibits her work in galleries and shows in New Hampshire and Maine and hopes to expand to other regions. She is a member of the Nashua Art Association, through which she publicizes its own Gallery One; New Hampshire Art Association; Sharon Arts Center; and a polymer-clay guild.

“People interpret my style differently, depending on their own experiences,” Sawaf said. “I try to create different things and not copy anything. As long as I like the results, that’s what matters to me.”

Suzanne D’Amato is a freelance writer who lives in Bedford.