Photos by Alex Hafizi

From High Tech to High Art

By Randy Simer

It’s a long way from Beirut, Lebanon to Santa Clarita, California.  It’s also a long way from I.T. specialist to artist.  Nabil Bader has traversed both of those journeys to become an award-winning painter whose work is shown in both the United States and Lebanon.  Born in 1966, Bader cherishes his time growing up in Lebanon where neighbors from various cultures came together in unexpected ways.   “It was an eclectic neighborhood,” Bader remembers.  “The owner of our building was Greek.  Most of the inhabitants were Armenian, French, and Greek.  You would say “good morning” in many different languages.  In 1975, when the war started, we used to go down stairs to avoid stray bullets.  One of our neighbors on the first floor, for example, was Egyptian and she would host us.  It turned into a social gathering with all different cultures getting together with food and drinks.  We would forget about the war that way.”
Bader immigrated to the United States with his family in 1987, where he put his minor in telecommunications to use by repairing phones.  He soon found himself on the ground floor of the tech boom, carving out a very successful career in computer networking and wireless communication.  After establishing himself in the telecommunications field, and having made a return trip to his homeland, his hunger for new experiences led him to discover his talent for painting.  “It was a coincidence that I got hooked,” he says.  “For two and a half years I took an entire curriculum of Italian.  Every Italian book talks about art and painting.  I then took an art class.  The first assignment I did was bad.  The teacher looked at my easel and said, ‘Disgusting.’  I went home disappointed.  My sister gave me a book called “Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain.”  I opened the book and I looked at the picture and said, ‘That’s easy enough.  I’m going to copy it.’  Every day I was doing a painting.  I started with copying and then I did it by myself, from my head.  I would take the paintings with me to work, set them on a chair and just look at them.  One of my friends would come in and say, ‘Wow, I love that.  I want that for my bedroom.’  People were starting to like my paintings, so I continued.”
When asked if he could turn his paintings into sculptures, Bader threw himself into learning this new art form with his usual determination.  “It was a challenge I put to myself and now I like sculptures even more than painting.  The history of sculptures has a lot of challenges and fulfillment.   Maybe that’s what drives me.” 
Visit Nabil Bader at www.lifeartform.com.