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I was born in Cairo, Egypt and lived there for the first twenty-five years of my life. At the age of fourteen I started taking private lessons in art taught by an Italian academician. I rebelled against the strict rules of the academy from the beginning, but I always loved to paint and continued to take classes through the years in all the different countries I lived in.

My life has been very nomadic; after Egypt I lived and studied in the United States, lived in Lebanon for four years, in Italy for eight, in England for one year and then back to the United States. At the moment I divide my time between Los Angeles and Paris.

I love bright colors, and my favorite artists are the Fauves ñ the wild ones ñ Henri Matisse, Andre Derain, Maurice Vlamick, Raol Dufy and Georges Braque. Like the Fauves, I paint nature in my own bright palette. Brown trees and gray houses take on all the colors of the rainbow. My paintings reflect an optimistic view of the world.