To Lift Our Spirits: Transcendent Art

CARAVAN Board Member Bassem Bejjani shares his top pick.

Ibrahim El Salahi, Reborn Sounds of Childhood Dreams I,1962-1963, Enamel paint and oil paint on cotton, 258.8x260cm

In this painting, the artist perfectly blends East and West in a seamless and effortless way. There is darkness but there is hope, there is abstraction but also concrete details, there is black and there is white. The painting is static but at the same time, everything in it guides your eye to a higher place. From stillness, movement is born. It is an image that transports you to a new, spiritual and magical place.

Read more about this work at Tate Modern.

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Bassem A. Bejjani, MD is Vice President of CARAVAN and Chief Medical Officer of Metis Genetics, a telegenetics counseling service company. He is on the Board of Trustees of The Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington in Seattle.  He is also trustee of the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF) and immediate past Chair of the Washington State Arts Commission (ArtsWA).  Dr. Bejjani has served on the Board of the Spokane Symphony where he was Executive Vice-President. A graduate of the American University of Beirut, the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) in Houston, he is a pediatrician and a medical geneticist. As Clinical Professor at the Elson S. Floyd College of Medical Sciences at Washington State University, he helped establish the genetics curriculum for the first class of medical students. He is co-founder of Signature Genomics, a genomics laboratory that was acquired by PerkinElmer, Inc. in 2010.  He is interested in arts and science education and the role of art in enhancing creativity, scientific learning and critical thinking.