The Art Addict Who Draws About Addictions
He opened the door, to his apartment. A young fellow, with a serene smile, almost bashful. With barely any eye contact, he walked us into his studio, walls filled with bright colored paintings, brushes lay there with colored tips, exhausted from the day’s work – another corner has his acrylics tubes hung there, like soldiers waiting for duty. Colors ranging from eye-popping pink to pastel white, there’s a range and a reason for it.
Finishing my tour of his art corner, I noticed a theme evident in his work.
Early Life
Born in Mina, Tripoli, in Lebanon, Tamim had a very traditional childhood, with supportive parents and playful siblings. Art visited him at an early age and befriended him throughout. Inspired by cartoon characters with popping color and caricature-esque features, Tamim took a liking to the abnormal, to the attractive in unconventional terms, to phosphoric-neon-like colors, that evolved and transpired to his art today.
Until one day, at the age of 15, life took a different brush stroke that painted a whole different path for him. His kidneys started failing, and kidney dialysis controlled his life – constricted by time, Tamim had only enough to attend university and complete his art.
But his inner addiction to art is the drive keeps him going until today.
“I collect colors, all shades of color, maybe that’s what colored my life in dark times.”
Life Phases
It was a struggle, balancing dialysis and life – as a college student specifically, as Tamim had to undergo the cleansing every 4 hours, considering the country’s situation of COVID, economic crisis, and inflation.
Tamim, kept going, with a smile on his face with every canvas completed, with struggle on his side from the inside. Even though it affected him mentally and physically, his art only kept evolving
After various trials and error of being on the transplant list, Tamim’s luck struck when the country’s state was at its lowest. In 2022, he underwent a transplant that transformed his life – and time no longer anchored him to a dialysis schedule.
“The crisis was good for me, bad for the country.”
He used his time “cleansing” to draw.
Draw hope from his drawing and actually draw masterpieces that reflect his interest. After various trials and errors, he narrowed in on a style that stood out in his work today. Borderless and surreal, that’s his signature art. With a very exhausted mental and physical body, he generated 16 paintings during his time bound to the dialysis machine.
“It was my escape while being tied down to a machine cleaning my kidneys.”
As a reward for himself and his body, he utilizes all the dialysis bags he has used in his life and created an installation that represented his struggle, the source of his struggle and how he cut ties with all what dragged him down.
Career
During his university years, Tamim was on a quest of finding his own style, and after being exposed to the classics and masters of art, Tamim thought, there’s something more, calling him from the inside to be placed on canvas. Till he stumbled on the subject of addictions – facing a very dire health problem and being seduced by things other than drugs and their subsidiaries, “Addictions” was quite the topic to be intrigued by, bearing in mind, he never experimented.
He is as pure as a new brush, unscathed.
However, the subject got engraved into his brain, the changes the human undergoes while experimenting with all sorts of drugs ranging from smokables, psychedelics, gambling, eating, drinking and so forth.
Reading intensely about them kindled his fascination and imagination, his creation disrupts your vision while entertaining a journey of the viewer.
After finishing his first masterpiece, he got recognized by his professor Bassam Kyrillos who put him in contact with a very reputable art dealer, whose impact changed his life. He moved him from the North of Lebanon into the heart of the art scene, and gave him access to all the material he requested. A new phase that put him on the scene, bumping elbows with the elite.
Style and Technique
“I hate the color black”, was his first reaction when I asked him about his art, “Acrylics make me mad, and oil, well oil, is a classic”, was his second sentence. Tamim always begins with one thing he has in mind then; he surprises him with the end product – the artistic evolution has a mind of its own. As his brushes dip themselves in fluorescent ideas, one after the other, an image appears, dowsed with the impact of every specific drug.
He speaks to his brushes like little people, addresses them as humans with souls of their own that guide his hands to create a story about how addicts look like once they go too far.
Health was a problem for me, so I reflect its mishap in art.
