Portrait art is evolving at great pace and has survived the test of time among other art styles. Portraits in the older times were painted of royalties, nobles and the elite class. In the modern times, everybody may have a portrait done by an artist. Great artists are working creatively towards making significant people eternal through their art.

Contemporary portrait art is diverse. The paintings carry deeper meaning than just the features and contours of a person. Portraits carry realism blended with abstract often, especially, in the case of Suzi Nassif paintings. Contemporary portrait art is presenting the workings of the mind of an artist plus the features of the subject he or she is painting. Paintings can carry different dimension or could be simply abstract depending on the skill of the artist. A skilled and experienced artist will always allow his works to capture the spirit of the person through expressions on faces and depth in the eyes of his or her subjects. Every painting tells its own story and reveals the skill and perception of the artist.

Every artist uses different techniques to paint the portraits. These techniques may use surrealism, realism, or abstract techniques. Surrealism art was a movement that combined the imaginary world with the real world to create more meaning. Salvador Dali was the pioneer of this genre. Surrealism art has its own unique symbols that conveyed meaning to the world. These symbols represented life, death, mortality, time, and limitations of human existence.

Realism is a style that represent life in its reality. The portraits done in this style are closer to real life and are very much life like. For example, Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is an example of realism as the portrait is very close to the reality. It does not carry symbols from the imagination of the artist.

Monet and Vincent Van Gogh made use of impressionism in their works of art. Impressionism was abstract and it carried the real life objects to represent a situation or a moment in life with the perception of the artist.

Expressionism was another art style resulting from a different art movement. It allowed artists to use bold strokes and intense colors to represent their vision of life. It revealed passion. It revealed intense expression of the thoughts of artists. The works of Henry Marisse are great representatives of Expressionism.

The Lebanese artist Suzi Nassif has blended expressionism with abstract art form in her early works. However, her deep love for Dali has made her settle down with surrealism as her signature art style. Her surrealist portraits are very famous. They represent different symbols from the works of Dali. She has painted portraits of Dali blending surrealism symbols with the artist’s representation as she created unique pieces. She is very well known for being creative artist with strong expressions in her art. She believes in the reality of life and agree with the fact that reality blends with imagination to make superior understanding of life possible.