Samar Jashan Satamian is a Jordanian Palestinian artist, married to a Swiss Armenian citizen with two children, and operates an Art Studio in Dubai, UAE, pursuing her passion for painting in multiple mediums and techniques with predominant focus on acrylic, oil and pastel painting.
Samar is considered as one of Jordan and Palestine’s upcoming artists, best known for her con-temporary portraiture and nudes executed on large canvases. Perhaps more than anything else, Samar’s art is defined by a deeply rooted symbiotic relationship between art, paintings and human social behavior which is unique in the Art World.
Born in 1971 in Amman, Jordan, with Palestinian roots (Jahshan family from Jerusalem and Ab-boud family from Jaffa), Samar was exposed to the world of Colors, Arts, Paintings, Flowers by her mother Yola Abboud Jahshan, regionally renowned landscaper, flower designer and wed-ding planner, who started out from her home-based studio while introducing Art as a subject in Jordan schools, then later on opening her prestigious ‘Magnolia boutique’ shop.
Samar’s love and appreciation to art was further influenced by her father, Dr. Samir Jahshan, well known ENT Doctor in the region, who was a keen Art lover always emphasizing the importance of culture and exposing her at a young age to Art galleries and Museums worldwide during their extensive travels.
The studio in the family house in Amman played an integral role during Samar’s upbringing. At the age of 8 and 10, Samar won the drawing award from the painter’s club in Amman and her drawings where featured in the local newspapers. By age eleven, Samar was already working with flowers and paintings; creating works of her own design. At sixteen, still by her mother’s side, she got exposed to the expansion of her mother’s floral Art into larger projects including private landscaping, private and royal weddings, dinners, events and functions etc. working with the most reputable artists, families, and venues in the Middle East.
Samar continued utilizing the studio space for her acrylic and oil painting. This was progressive-ly becoming her preferred medium as she was discovering her own artistic identity and gradual-ly differentiating herself from her mother and mentor. On a parallel basis, Samar pursued her academic studies and graduated from the American university of Beirut in social behavioral sci-ences, worked in esteemed institutions such as UNICEF (United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund) and ESCWA (Economic and social commission for Western Asia) at the United Nations.
Thereafter, she created and developed two successful design businesses in the women’s acces-sories and personalized/custom favors and gifts. Later, Samar continued to specialize in social and human behavior, becoming a certified Evolved NLP Coach, member of the Federation of NLP coaching professionals as well as member of the Comensa (coaches and mentors of South Africa), she is now trained in neural and behavioral techniques such as neuro-linguistic pro-gramming, stress biofeedback, hypnosis and paradigm techniques.
Together with some partners, she set up and opened the Coaching platform Catalyst Concepts in 2012, and since then, Samar coached around 100 clients and provided around 600 hours of coaching, more information is available about Samar's coaching activity at www.catalystconcepts.org, section Life Coaching.
When it comes to art and paintings, each of Samar’s works offers us an entry point into the vari-ety and richness that lies beneath every face and bust we encounter in life, whether applied in acrylic or oil paint. The blending of techniques across genres combined with her deep know how of the human face, emotions and body is a display of Samar’s work in multiple media, all bear-ing visible overlap.
Her paintings start with multi layers of abstract lines and patches of colors, that establish a base for the subsequently overlaid image of a face, emotions, look or bust with focus on the woman. Her color pallet is vibrant, dynamic and dazzling, the cut of her knife incisive,
For Samar, the woman reflects the richness of identity and emotions within our increasingly globalized world which is best symbolized by the blotches of colors, strokes, eyes
Her work is clearly focused on the dialogue between the figurative and expressive abstract. Her subtle representations deal with the duality of the visible and invisible, the material and the im-material, the emotions and controls. Samar thus translates her own understanding of human and face emotions and identity, drawing from her deep social behavioral experience and images in her daily surrounds.
What lies beneath a face is infinitely more intriguing than its impassive surface may suggest. Sa-mar speculates about the enigmas, the identities, the emotions and the stories behind people’s everyday stoic façades. In probing how we are shaped – and placed – by our identity, Samar homes in on the woman population.
Through the visages contemplated in her paintings, Samar closely observes this fluidity, chal-lenging simplistic physical stereotypes by depicting a succession of dynamic and multifaceted personae. Observing the tension between abstraction and representation. There is a sense of unity conveyed by Samar’s portraits, with the multiplicity of partial or fragmented representa-tions serving to create a holistic image in the mind’s eye.
Psychology tells us that often, that which appears to obscure can, in fact, serve to reveal, imply and illuminate. Samar invites the observer to contemplate the secrets belying these ostensibly inscrutable faces. The people she paints or sculpts possess a particular quality that appeals to her visual sensitivity, but nothing more in the way of social influence. The sitter’s face acts, quite simply, as a vessel for Samar’s experimentation with colour, stroke and technique.
Samar continues her visual and tactile exploration of hybrid identity and its ever changing and emerging nature within the Middle East’s psycho-social landscape. While retaining all their aus-terity and peaceful aesthetic, Samar’s figures remain highly charged with the emotive and ges-tural energy of his creative process.
Based between Dubai, Amman, and Switzerland, Samar’s process as an artist today remains adaptive, inventive, and engaging. Through she is starting to achieve success, including a few exhibitions in Dubai and one planned in Amman early June (DAR Art Fair), her work continues to inspire and captivate the minds of art novices and experts alike in the region