Sabhan Adam sees his work as a priesthood, he considers what he achieves as a mission. This is obvious when we read the three interviews he has given to Diala Gemayel, the artist has not changed, even if his approach is more radical, probably so as not to give in any compromises.

June 2003
“I paint because I’m the son of this world. It would be simplistic to put me in a frame. I don’t want to be geographically located [...] In that respect, I’m a missionary man, I paint for the world and I put my personal identity in it. I represent humanity whereas others want to represent their motherland. Anyway, in New-York or in Beyrouth human loneliness is the same.”

October 2004
“Deep inside of me, there’s a profound paradoxe. I know everything and nothing. When I work, I carry 6 billion human beings. Every object, every thought is heavier for me than for anybody else. Everything has a meaning and has a connection with the history of humanity. I’m the only painter who is exclusively interested in drawing man’s History, with a capital H.

August 2007*
“How is it possible to explain painting? It is more than a canvas and colour, just like music. What I do has no relationship with any theories or ideologies. It lies between feeling and spirit. What matters is what I see and how I render that in my work. It is only inhabited by my perception of time. People always want to know about the whys, they never raise the question of being. God is behind everything, and I follow him. I deeply love human beings, in their tiniest lives.

Beggar or King
“Sabhan, Hassakeh’s hermit, carries on as a painter and a philosopher, ready to sacrifice his life to reach for the light. Just as Plato’s creature forced into exile in a dark cave, having found the way, he plunges into “the blackest and the darkest regions of the soul”, as the poet Adonis says. He is against eloquence : the eloquence of form and colour. As far as painting is concerned, his method is metaphysical, although he seems directly connected to reality. He is childhood playing with pre-rational ink. His studio is the night of the body.”

From the night arises truth, Sabhan Adam’s, an essential and long questioning on being.