Biography
Esam Jlilati was passionate about visual arts and architecture since his childhood and had always aimed for a career as a painter.
However, his father believed that art was reserved only for the rich, but not for those who needed to make their own living. Therefore, he chose engineering as focus of his formal education and architectural design as career.
When he began studying in Darmstadt Germany, he managed to continue painting parallel to his career.
After his immigration to Canada in 2004, Esam decided to bring art to the processional level and make it his primarily career.
He has delivered lectures and wrote articles about the art technique and architectural history, which makes him renowned through become local and international journals and magazines.
Upon viewing his works, it becomes quite obvious that this artist spends an inordinate amount of time laboring over them so as to make them unique and thought provoking, and some of his paintings are detailed to the point of being almost microscopic.
His works has been exhibited and sold in Europe, North America, Australia and the Middle East.
Jlilati’s paintings present the mixture of fantasy modern art with the ancient architectural art, best described as a blend of Expressionism, realism and sometime surrealism, but he believes that he has his own style and calls it “fantasy realism”
Esam spends most of his time in his home based studio in Toronto along with traveling to US, Philadelphia occasionally.
His subjects are his interpretation of objects in the real world modified by his emotions and ideals, this, in turn, sometimes lends a mythical, other-worldliness to his work.
His artworks are achieved using oil and water colors.
