Schooled in Eastern Orthodox art, Jodi Simmons offers an iconographic variation on Italian Renaissance “holy conversation” imagery, in which saints from different eras are shown gathered around sacred figures like the Madonna and Child, as if holding divine debates.
In the art world, he is familiarly called Sliman. Younger Palestinian painters revere him. For more than 40 years, working in occupied lands, Suleiman Mansour has taught, led, and engaged in creative work that brings together art forms, cultural legacy, and a record of a land and a people. A Palestinian Christian, he embeds in his work recurring themes and designs drawn from Islam. As the magazine emel puts it, “Islam is not only part of his culture but also his identity.”