“My practice begins in stillness, but what emerges is not still.”

I come to the canvas seeking presence. Not as a concept, but as a necessity. In the middle of life’s turbulence, my practice is where I release and return to presence. I open with quiet observation, often beginning with my non-dominant hand, sometimes painting with my eyes closed, letting gesture move before thought can intervene.

But the body knows what the mind tries to quiet. What arrives on the canvas is not the peace I came looking for, it is everything that preceded it, and an insistence on being here anyway. The work holds what presence makes room for, which turns out to be more charged, more archetypal, and more urgent than stillness alone. The figures that emerge are not planned, and the color is intense by necessity, not choice.

With a background in psychology and creative arts, I understand the mind and body as sites of knowing. My process bypasses habit and control not to achieve calm, but to make contact with what is real and present. The paintings are documents of that contact, evidence of presence under pressure.

I am not painting peace. I am painting the practice of returning to it.

Shereen Diab works in acrylic, ink, and oil pastel on large-scale canvas. She holds an MA in Psychology from the American University of Beirut and trained in Creative and Therapeutic Arts in Vienna. Her work has been featured in New Visionary Magazine, Divide Magazine, and Art Maker Mag (all 2025). She was awarded International Young Visual Arts Entrepreneur of the Year by the British Council, London, in 2008.