There is one spectacle grander than the sea... the sky... one spectacle grander than the sky... the interior of the soul Victor Hugo The stars are putting on their glittering belts. They throw around their shoulders cloaks that flash Like a great shadow's last embellishment Wallace Stevens Before I met Britt Boutros Ghali I presumed that the descendant of Vikings was an old battle-axe. I liken her abstracts to the mist mask, the masque antibrouillard, or better still, the fog lamp, feu antibrouillard, or phare antibrouillard. her brushstrokes illuminates the mysterious arriere pays. The skyscrapers of Giza towering over her riverside atelier scatter iridescent patterns over the River Nile. Yet, the cityscape could be a million miles away. Fishermen, in exuberantly painted boats of vivid colours sail past her atelier, a barge and certainly not a Norseman's Longship, rocking gently to the lackadaisical motions of the Nile waters. The fishermen delight in the richness of riverside living, and so does she. A little imagination goes a long way in such tranquil, gratifying surroundings. And, the abstract expressionistic spirit of the 1960s and 1970s that suffused her bohemian Parisian life as an amateur art student was nurtured on the balmy banks of the Nile. Her endeavours and endless experimentation were crowned when in 1996, Britt was awarded the Saint Olaf Order by King Haakon of Norway. Northern Lights, Polar Aurorae,thousands of miles away, eulogize thetranslucent beauty of the arriere pays.But, is this bewitching land Norway, or is it the Nile? Perhaps, it is Paris, the Seinewell past midnight. Or even Svolvaer, her home city in the Norwegian Arctic, Land of the Midnight Sun. Britt has no pre-conceptual experience of the world she paints. Her abstracts silence the sonorous visions of the magical meteorological phenomena, such as aurora borealis, with the warmth of the blinding blues of the Arctic Ocean, the fjords and rustic ravines, a blissful intimacy pervades her abstracts and a binding authenticity to boot. “From wonder into wonder existence opens,” mused Lao Tzu. And, the artist's life is simply one of bouncing from once wonder to another, and that is precisely how her horizons unravel. She had no formal training in art. During a visit to Paris as an 18-year old student she discovered art and artists. She fleetingly met Picasso, and it is ironic that she exhibits her abstracts today in the Picasso Gallery, Zamalek, Cairo. La chambre bleue, Picasso's 1901 marvel springs to mind as the abstract paintings in shades of blue predominate in Britt Boutros Ghali's current exhibition at the Picasso Gallery. Prussian blue, navy, and a touch turquoise and aquamarine, and only occasionally warmed by oranges, canary yellows, icy whites and shocking pink. Britt Boutros Ghali was born bourgeois and yet there is no room for possession in her paintings. Some painters find it agaonizingly painful to let go of their creations. But not Britt Boutros Ghali. She brilliantly posits the spirits from the bleak frozen Arctic wastelands to the lush sub-tropical sublimes of the Egyptian scene. The metamorphosis is hardly perceptible to the nescient, benighted eye. Egypt is in all her paintings, the stunning naive paintings of Egyptian, Nubian and Sudanese women, and the optimistic implications of her abstracts. The diligent fishermen of the Nile are an inspiration even though they hardly ever feature in her works. She only paints women who communicate with her in an outlandish language like extra-terrestrial beings. Her workshop or studio is a fascinating barge moored on the bank of the Nile, Giza. It is peopled by her paintings. She refers to it as her atelier where her women come and go in dreamlike visitations. Atelier, incidentally, has the connotation of being the home of an alchemist, an enchantress or even a necromancer. The fishermen pass by and sometimes stop for coffee or tea and a chat. “They saved me and my art from the hooligans during the 25 January Revolution when all was chaos. I was at a loss and they came to the rescue,” she smiles fondly at the fishermen. And, somehow, they remind her of the Norwegian fishermen at sea, tempestuously rough seas, though, not gentle and genial like the Nile. She hails from a family of shipbuilders. Small wonder her atelier is a moored boat and her paintings are replete with water. And, the immersive experience lends her art a polished panache. The waters, she emphasises is the crucial factor and common denominator of her abstracts. Blue is the predominant colour in Britt Boutros-Ghali's current exhibition. Auroras, like her angels, are created by charged particles, mainly electrons and protons in scientific terminology, but actually emotions in Britt's parlance. Like her women, and she never resorts to models, the particles descend from the atmosphere, from her esoteric aescetism, from above causing ionization and excitation of atmospheric constituents, and consequent optical emissions. And, Britt's abstracts are an effusion of colours, Arctic and Nilotic. Britt captivated a Coptic Christian Egyptian aristocrat, Raouf Boutros Ghali, whose grandfather was modern Egypt's first prime minister, the controversial Boutros Boutros Ghali, not to be confused with his namesake the former United Nations Secretary General, assassinated by a militant Islamist zealot, Ahmed Al-Wardani. Everything is random. It was love at first sight, as in a romantic movie, and in a dreamlike flight from Paris to Zurich. “The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky,” is the relevant shard of Picasso's captivating paean. The serenade was sealed. Hypnagogic like her abstracts, somewhat surreal. “Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add colour to my sunset sky,” so sang the greatest sage of them all Rabindranath Tagore. Britt had a Norwegian husband already. “You must be exhausted by your artistic endeavours and you do need a rest, I understand,” was his curt reprimand. But, Britt was dead serious. She left him and her three children behind. All three are artists today like their mother. Katrina is a painter and sculptor. Michele is also in the art scene and Paul-Timo is yet another gifted painter. Karim, her son from her present husband Raouf is a film director. Parsimonious? Never, a mother is mothering, even one that is a headstrong hedonistic artist. Her children are her most ardent admirers. And, Karim was present in Picasso at the opening of her “Hope” exhibition. Sybaritic, yes. Penniless, and not even knowing who this mysterious man, her Delphian paramour was, she was bemused by his regal and imposing mannerisms and the way in which people responded to him with courtly deference. Perhaps her Egyptian sojourn's most powerful facet was the aspect of precariousness and constant changeability. The country's mercurial durability dovetailing in the most unexpected fashion was the most effective medium she manipulated oil, acrylic and gold leaf and silver gilt on canvas. Only later did she understand that he was one of the historically privileged landed gentry of Egypt. And, for Britt, Egypt has served as a metaphor: the classical embodiment of universal ideals of aplomb, beauty and the search for the very elixir of life.
