An Article by D. M. (771 words, 4 min. read)
At the Smallville Hotel, Beirut a new chapter in abstraction takes flight.
In a muted yet powerful atmosphere, Naja Kerellos unveils a body of work that signals not only artistic maturity, but also a soulful metamorphosis. Curated by Dr. Tony Karam in collaboration with Ghassan Kitmitto, The Observer—a solo exhibition that opened on July 3rd, 2025 —marks a pivotal moment in the painter’s journey. It is a moment where intuition fuses with structure, and the invisible becomes nearly audible through texture and form.
Kerellos, born in 1984 in Byblos, approaches art like he approaches life with realism, introspection, and silent courage. A self-taught artist since 2019, his canvases speak a language of discovery and sensitivity. But what captures the viewer most, beyond the evident technical evolution, is the recurring, ghostlike presence of a bird often misunderstood: the crow.
A Crow is Not a Curse
Often mistaken for an omen, the crow in Kerellos’ work is no harbinger of doom. It is, instead, a spirit guide — intelligent, social, and resourceful. The artist does not paint the bird directly in full form; he suggests it, veils it in foggy corners, allows its beak or wing to emerge from abstraction like a secret told between old friends. These crows are not painted in black. They are formed in negative space, in brushstrokes, in the silent tension between colors. They appear as if memory itself conjured them — not for fright, but for thought.
Naja Kerellos declares: “Intelligent, social, communicator and mysterious — is a crow that bad?”
This quote lingers in the mind, challenging the way we instinctively judge what we do not understand. It redefines the crow not as a bad omen, but as a symbol of complexity, of duality, of misunderstood wisdom.
Scientific studies show that crows have the intelligence of a seven-year-old child. They play, mourn, remember faces, and hold grudges — not out of spite, but out of brilliant memory. In Kerellos’ hands, this memory becomes a visual language. Each canvas feels like it remembers something: a city turned to dust, a light breaking through concrete, a voice you forgot you missed.
The Language of Texture and Light
Kerellos’ new technique is deliberate and layered. He builds his paintings the way a crow builds its nest with fragments, textures, and things most people overlook. Acrylics and oils dance together across the surface, creating areas of flat opacity contrasted by thick impastos, scraped walls, and luminous cracks of color. Grey dominates (the quiet kind, the meditative) until, suddenly, a burst of fluorescent orange or a bold, rebellious red slices through, like a cry or a laugh in the night.
The canvases, often large and monolithic, pulse with life beneath their stillness. Shapes suggest structures — urban ruins, windows, doors half-open — but never resolve fully. They whisper. And in these spaces, the crow dwells. Sometimes in a corner like a secret. Sometimes right in the center, daring you to look closer.
Between Intellect and Instinct
There is something almost spiritual in this show, not in a religious sense, but in the feeling of being accompanied. The crow as spirit animal is known to guide the intuitive, the thinkers, the ones who walk alone but watch everything. Is it a coincidence that Kerellos, a self-taught artist guided only by instinct and a strong inner compass, has chosen this animal — or rather, been chosen by it?
With the mentorship of Ghassan Kitmitto and the curatorial precision of Dr. Tony Karam, an intelligent collaboration happens, and Kerellos now paints like a man who has found a visual language and trusts it. These are not beginner’s works. These are quiet declarations. He is no longer searching for a voice, he is rather letting it speak.
The Bird in the Painting
In one canvas, you might find the suggestion of wings formed by negative space. In another, a dark spot not quite shaped like a crow, but certainly watching like one. In a third, the crow is reduced to shadow and geometry, part of the structure itself. It is presence without form. It is the bird and the memory of the bird. Like grief, like intuition, like something that lives in you without needing to be seen to be felt.
A Flight Toward Depth
This exhibition is a milestone in the artist’s career. It is a window into the unspoken; the crow’s world, and ours. In the hands of Naja Kerellos, abstraction deepens the meaning. His textures are emotional sediment. His colors are not chosen: they arrive, they insist.
And through it all, the crow flies — silently, wisely, never alone.
