Rema Ghuloum: Painting has been vital for me during this time, a kind of life line. I didn’t begin painting during the pandemic right away. I am a new mother. My son was born in September of 2019. I didn’t really get back to my studio until the end of December of that year anyway. I was excited to paint again. I started going to the studio at night, painting large, feeling a flow. This all changed when we had to shelter in place in March. I didn’t know what to do. To be honest, after receiving the stay-at-home order I kind of felt paralyzed. I was teaching online and adjusting to that and being full time at home without child care was overwhelming. I couldn’t conceive of creating space to make work. I felt fully immersed at home and wasn't willing to surrender to the situation right away. I didn't make any art for three weeks. I baked and cooked a lot.

For me, three weeks without making art felt like months. I am a worker. Friends were encouraging me to create space at home and I knew I wanted to, but I needed to surrender and commit. I finally organized my bedroom and carved out space on our desk to draw. I knew that I would have to work at night. I set up a space near my baby’s crib so that I could care for him. I remember making my first drawing. It was April 7th, a full moon. It was a pink moon. I finally accepted the pandemic that night and made my drawing practice a daily ritual. I have been drawing almost every night ever since.

My work often involves ritual. This drawing practice opened everything up. I finally returned to my studio in May. It happened gradually. I started going a few nights a week, but I still felt uneasy. I began working on a group of large horizontal paintings. I wanted to convey spaces that evoked the contrasts of experiences or spectrums of emotion that we had been feeling collectively. The paintings became incredibly prismatic, vibrant, and intense. The space in the paintings became more destabilizing and full of movement. They almost fall apart or break down, but seem to be held together in their centers.

RG: Long Beach has an incredibly distinctive creative community. It is unique in that it is a coastal city, college town, and port. It seems to draw a wide range of artists from many different backgrounds. Its cultural diversity adds to its vibrancy. I attended CSULB as an undergraduate and also received my BFA in Drawing and Painting there. I thrived there as a student. It felt accessible and inclusive. The School of Art is incredible and the professors are dedicated, well informed, and enthusiastic. I grew up by the ocean, so it was comforting to be able to go there to reset. Some of my favorite artists are friends from school that continue to teach or live in the area.

I have also been able to experience younger artists’ development now that I am a part-time lecturer at CSULB. I have been teaching in the Drawing and Painting Department since 2012, and it has been the most enriching and inspiring experience. The students have a lot of heart and drive. It has been an honor to assist them with their artistic goals, seeing them pursue their practices after graduating.

RG: I love this question because I think the intersection between empathy and art is what drives me as a human. My paintings are emotional. They try to capture something felt, seen, experienced, and they are always trying to communicate something that cannot be done with words. They attempt to transform the viewer, hoping to transmit a feeling deep within. Color, surface, texture can recall memories, transport, and shift how one thinks about what one knows. I hope this exchange can lead to visceral, meaningful connections about the human condition.

I truly believe producing art as well as engaging with it can transform. I also feel my role as an educator has allowed me to cultivate empathy through working with students. My hope is that an engagement with art makes them more empathic and able to experience the world and each other with more compassion and understanding. This dialogue is tremendously enriching and is full of potential. It allows for deeper understanding, sensitivity, and communication. I feel blessed to be part of my students’ journey and am transformed by them every day.

RG: Art and wellness are definitely part of my language. I find art particularly therapeutic right now. It feels generative and positive, a direct outlet to translate our experiences. I am also a long-time meditator and reiki practitioner, and I have been invested in various other practices like Qigong, tai chi, and yoga over the years, all of which have informed my art and life directly or indirectly. Since the pandemic, Vipassana meditation and Qigong have been part of my life at home.

I have been practicing Vipassana since 2013. Vipassana is a Buddhist term that means insight or the ability to see things as they really are. The objective of this form of meditation is to gain insight through breath and from focusing on sensations in your body—feeling them, becoming equanimous to them, and allowing them to pass. The realization within this practice is of acceptance and of presence, knowing that feelings or energy that is experienced in one's body is due to karma/previous actions and cellular memory. The idea is to allow things to flow through you without reacting to them. The energy transforms. My painting process took on a new understanding or meaning after I began to practice Vipassana. When one begins to sit and focus on sensations on/in the body, it is possible to feel the relationships between memory and those feelings.

I like to “excavate color” or remove the top layers of paint/color to get to the buried layers. I do this by sanding and scraping paint off of the surface. The painting’s history is present on its surface, but it is also embedded. I think the way one stores and transforms memory in the body is similar, recognizing sensations and allowing them to transform. My process is much like this. I build up the surface slowly with thin layers, and the process of removal allows me to expose previous moments, responding to them and ultimately transforming them. I think my interest in memory is really about this potential to travel through time and to transform. The building up of the surface and the subtle removal of the surface is reminiscent of this.