Surrey Art Gallery to host artist talk about healing through painting
Joseph P. Ghabi will host the first Thursday Artist Talk for the fall at the Surrey Art Gallery
"Coded Communications" by Joseph P. Ghabi. (submitted)
The Surrey Art Gallery is launching its fall season of Thursday Artist Talks in-person, starting with local artist Joseph P. Ghabi.
Ghabi is a former engineer, banker, and international sales manager, but he says his true gift appeared through the combination of healing and art. At the age of 55, Ghabi pursues painting through meditation and uses numerology as inspiration for the use of colours.
“Every colour has a vibration to it. I take the name of the colour, for example, blue, and I turn it into the numbers in numerology,” Ghabi says.
Numerology is a belief that the universe is a system dependent on the properties of numbers, which come from the numbers’ inherent vibration. Vibration is sometimes used to describe beliefs in the power of colours, and each number has a unique vibration that gives it certain properties.
Since 2017, Ghabi has created over 400 bold paintings featuring intense colours primarily done in acrylic.
“Every painting I do I have a purpose for it, and I will have an intention to it, and what it wants to portray through the colouring that I use, and what the colouring is going to bring as enhancement to somebody.”
Ghabi runs the Soul to Soul Connection program where he tries to help people through their spiritual problems and find peace with their past.
“In that program, I do not teach painting, but awaken somebody’s gift to become awakened to their creativity through painting. This program [allows] people to release whatever blocks them from being creative,” he says.
He adds that he doesn’t need to show them, only tell them what they need for tools and to go create. Some people from his program are selling their art, according to Ghabi, and they’ve never touched a paintbrush before in their life.
“We are all creative. We all have some creativity. But, for many of us, we keep telling ourselves, ‘But I’m not an artist, but I’m not a painter, but I’m not- I’m not- I’m not.’ We keep declining things by repeating the negative part of it,” Ghabi says.
“We are the worst enemy to ourselves, we judge ourselves. If people [got] outside their head and started following their heart and started creating, it doesn’t matter who’s judging you about creativity.”
Ghabi says life is simple, but we tend to make it complicated for ourselves.
“If you have a tough childhood experience, it’s not a life sentence. Move on, move beyond, start allowing yourself to do what you’re meant to. We are all here with a purpose to do something.”
He says we shouldn’t get stuck on the sidelines waiting for something to happen.
“You can do anything you want to do. There’s nothing stopping you except yourself,” he adds.
Ghabi’s talk titled “If I Can Do It…” will be on Sept. 9 from 7:30 pm to 9:00 pm at the Surrey Art Gallery.
