And though he paints you scenes touched by the light climbing over them, so that they dance here and drowse there in the haze of the shadows... he will never wreck their foundations, mocking their harmony, dragged along after those extremist whims they have named "modern art" — you will never start back before any canvas of his: no discord, no trifling with things sacred. Enough for you that tranquillity and gladness flood the depths of your soul. And is not this, upon your life, the definition of art in its simplest expression??

From a talk by the artist Youssef Howayek about his oldest friend: "Omar Onsi is a true artist, and a philosopher in the course of his artistic life without knowing it! His is the precedence in raising the level of Eastern art... and his works will remain alive on the day other works crumble and are folded away!"

And in description of his canvas, let us listen to Dr. Abd al-Rahman al-Labban: "Onsi is a tender poet who composes his poems in choice, refined

lines and fresh colors, and chants them to a delicate rhythm of warm shadows and merry, dancing lights..."

Dear reader!...

You may pass him standing on a mountain slope, heedless of everything, his hair disheveled, never lifting his eyes from the canvas except to stare into the far horizon, hurrying his brush to mix its colors, recording a violet sunset, or a rosy sunrise from behind a mountain. Stand in awe. You are present at a moment of creation! And our rare artist — this is his life: nature's companion, a searcher after beauty, seizing it wherever he finds it, so that it trembles under his fingertips in a throb of life: image and color and shade, as though time had halted in its course... and that scene stands there, never to move!!...

And dear reader... one last whisper!...

On a day when joy chokes and stifles in your heart, and your sky grows heavy and dark with cares... feast your senses on an "Onsi" canvas: the world will smile on you anew, the sun will glitter again, and from paradise a dew-moist breeze will brush your face...