Basel Dahman

Artist Statement:

Basel Dahman is an emerging contemporary artist born in Syria, works and lives in Bay Area California United States.

His artwork has quickly became a full time practice after graduating from a fine arts college. Basel’s artwork has been collected worldwide and regularly exhibited nationwide.

His work primarily depicts emotional representations of traumatic experiences brought back to life in a positive light, elements of the aftermath of the Syrian war (still ongoing war until today) and the Syrian culture including islamic geometric patterns and Arabic calligraphy and otherworldly surroundings.

Basel’s subjects are conceptualized through an exploration of pencil and digital revision, using his documented past work as a means to revisit and expand on the themes and motifs featured in his paintings. The final compositions are achieved by building layers of acrylic paint, followed by an intuitive application of heavily bodied acrylic or oil mediums, also using metallic leaf sheets in special parts of his compositions.

Education:

2018 Bachelor of Fine Arts – Painting and Drawing Department of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Tishreen University in Latakia, Syria.

Exhibitions:

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2024 Gallery Sausalito, California - The largest small painting exhibition

2024 Marin Art Fair, Marin city, California

Artistic Influences:

Pablo Picasso, Caravaggio, Henri Matisse, Alexander Calder, Lucian Freud, Edvard Munch, Gustav Klimt.

Tags:

figurativism, figurative art, expressionism, contemporary art, modern art, abstract