Rima Amyuni’s latest series of works extends the theme of idyllic mountainous landscapes from her last exhibition, Paradis Fleuris. The subject of this work is informed by the artist’s immediate surroundings – her house, studio, and garden in the suburban town of Yarzé, Lebanon – but corresponds to a state of mind rather than a particular place. Painted in oils and acrylics of radiating color, Yarzé, which is only fifteen kilometers southeast of the city of Beirut, appears as a bucolic place far removed from the anxieties and pressures of everyday life.
Rima Amyuni was born in Beirut in 1954. She has a degree in Fine Arts from the Byam Shaw School of Art (now part of the Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design) in London and a degree in Visual Arts from Columbia University in New York City. She has had solo exhibitions in Beirut at Epreuve d’Artiste Gallery in 1998 and at Alice Mogabgab Gallery in 2007, 2009, and Agial Art Gallery hosted her last two exhibitions, her contentious solo exhibition, A Tribute to a House Fairy about the plight of domestic workers in Lebanon in 2015, and Paradis Fleuris in 2017. She has taught at the Lebanese Academy of Arts (ALBA) and at the two secondary schools Louise Wegman and Jesus and Mary. In 1995, she won the first prize in painting at Sursock Museum’s Salon d’Automne. She lives and works in Yarzé, Lebanon, a place which inspires the subjects of her paintings
