Henry Jabbour | The Courage to Be

Pontone Gallery presents The Courage to Be, a new body of work by Henry Jabbour, which continues his exploration of human connection, vulnerability, and the landscapes - real and imagined - that shape our sense of belonging.

Jabbour paints to feel rather than to think. His process is raw, intuitive, and cathartic, each canvas beginning from an emotional state and unfolding through layers of florid and broad brushstrokes. The resulting works - charged with saturated colour and tactile impasto - are visual poems, open to multiple readings. “Art should live outside the intention of the artist,” he says. “You read something different every time.”

Figures, when present, are loosely drawn and genderless - embodiments of universal emotion rather than portraits. They walk, pause, and gaze outward through the artist’s vibrant paint-scape, drawing on its kinetic energy, suffused in the invigorating, polychromatic light, and refracting movement, growth, and hope. At times, they are absent altogether, leaving the viewer to project a human presence into dreamlike, imagined landscapes. In both presence and absence, Jabbour’s work asks: Who am I without the others? Without the group, without shared values?

The paintings are infused with longing for safety - emotional, relational, and communal - a longing shaped in part by the artist’s own history growing up during the Lebanese Civil War. With memories stirred, the artist has embarked on the deeply human reflection on fragility, courage, and the power of vulnerability.

Colour here is both subject and language. Mediterranean blues, citrus yellows, Pompeian reds, lilac violets and acid greens radiate across the surface, their luminosity heightened by light tints and unmuted by earthy tones. Thick, gestural strokes, smears, and drips bear the physical trace of the artist’s hand, each mark a record of movement, decision, and feeling.

Recurring motifs - such as the figure holding a flower - deliver layered meanings for the viewer to peel back. Purposed for beginnings, unions, and farewells; flowers are symbols of beauty, fragility, and life’s transience. “The flower is like a poem,” Jabbour says. “You make something of it depending on your mood.”

Walking daily through a garden dense with foliage and blooms to reach his studio, Jabbour brings with him an acute sensitivity to the synesthetic link between colour and feeling. In the studio, he “digs and digs” into paint, leaving traces that hold both pain and hope. While his work is rooted in personal experience, it looks forward - seeking to transform vulnerability into strength, and the act of painting into a space of healing for both artist and viewer.