Alumni Profile
Rana Raouda Toriel ’83 Paints a bright world By Tracy Chemaly
“ My studies at BUC allowed me to reveal my real personality – the artist in me.” Rana Raouda Toriel began her painting career without a brush. Rather, it was her heart that became her first artistic tool. “When I was about six years old, I started imagining the Bekaa Valley in terms of its shapes, forms, colors and textures,” said the fine arts graduate of LAU (formerly BUC), who now lives in France. What began as a childhood fascination with a simple process —the way in which paint gets mixed with water when a painter dips a paintbrush to clean it — has resulted in an artistic career that has led Toriel to exhibit her work in shows from Beirut, Dubai, Jordan and France, to the U.S., Italy, the U.K. and Switzerland. After graduating in 1983, Toriel went on to complete her master’s in the U.S. Her work is currently part of permanent exhibitions in Beirut, Rome and Dubai, and it stands in the private collections of the Banque Audi art collection, Sursock Museum, as well as the Hermes art collection in Dubai. Being born and raised in Lebanon provided Toriel with perhaps her greatest realization. “Growing up during the ugliness of the war left space for a huge imagination,” she explained. “I realized that beauty existed no matter what. As long as I had a window from where I could see the sky, there was no limit to my imagination.” The green of the cedars, the red of the tiled roofs, the blue of the Mediterranean and the pink and orange colors of the sunsets allowed her to replace the gray memories of war with optimistic colors and brushstrokes of light. Bright color dominates Toriel’s work, mostly painted in various tones of the same hue. This fascination with color has been a major influence since early on in her career, when she
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came across one of Odilon Redon’s paintings in the National Art Gallery in Washington, D.C. That painting contains a red stain, which Toriel described as an “honesty and purity of color,” and which continues to fuel her creativity to this day. Another great influence was one of her BUC lecturers, Ms. Irani. “I owe a lot to her,” said a grateful Toriel. “She was generous with her knowledge and showed me the real dimensions of art.” She remembers Irani forcing her to repeat the same relief seven times. “It made me cry then, but now you can imagine how much I thank her for having believed in me,” she said, laughing.
“ I remembered how, as students, we often wondered how people got to exhibit their work, how they sell and how they evolve. Finally I had the answer: time, patience, seriously hard work and belief in oneself” Toriel added that studying at BUC, whose campus she called a haven, was a vital experience for developing her art. “My studies at BUC allowed me to reveal my real personality – the artist in me. When I returned to visit after an absence of several years, I remembered how, as students, we often wondered how people got to exhibit their work, how they sell and how they evolve. Finally I had the answer: time, patience, seriously hard work and belief in oneself.”