... One of Lebanon's cultivated women, she has lately returned from Paris after studying art under the most celebrated artists. Here she speaks of her art, and of her hopes and aspirations...

— May we first know, Miss Salwa, what you intend to do now that you have returned from France?

— That is a question I am still hesitant to answer — for many forces pull me between staying here and returning to Paris — and the truth is that I have not yet finally decided what I want to do.

— What is to prevent you, for instance, from taking up the teaching of drawing and modern art in our institutions of higher learning?

— In principle I welcome the idea, because one who holds a conviction can, through teaching, spread his idea and propagate it among the students — and had I decided what I am going to do, my first project would have been to open an institute of modern art.

— Is it true, as we have heard, that you intend to return to Paris to hold a second exhibition?

— I will not deny to you my desire to return to Paris, because the Parisian atmosphere understands this shade of modern art at which I have arrived better than any other, and I have great hope of contributing to the worldwide artistic renaissance.

— That is a great honor for us. And now may I ask when your artistic life began?

— As a schoolgirl I was always most skillful at drawing — at drawing the teachers in particu-lar — and the strange thing is that I produced nothing in the drawing lesson set aside for that purpose. That is because we were forced to copy a given picture, and in that there is enough to kill the faculty of creation.

— Naturally. And did you study art in Beirut before leaving for Paris?

— Yes — I studied art in Beirut for a short time under the artist Moustafa Farroukh, and for a whole year under the artist Omar Onsi.

— I know that you used to paint within the realistic school — I mean as the Lebanese artists paint, men like Onsi and Farroukh. When, then, did your