Ali Eyal was born and raised in New England. His family lived in Connecticut, where he began his education before continuing his studies in Massachusetts and, later, in France. His father, a businessman, maintained a modest collection of contemporary French art, and his mother, a professional photographer, also taught art history.

“I grew up in an art-loving environment. But it was my first class in art history freshman year at college which really opened my eyes to the world of art. From freshman year on, I looked forward each year to another art history class.”

In college, Eyal continued studying French and worked in France for several summers. After graduating, he spent a year studying in Paris, where he encountered the works of the great French Impressionist painters firsthand. It began a lasting love of the landscapes painted by the French and American Impressionists of the late 19th century.

“What first attracted me to them were the works of Paul Cézanne and Claude Monet, which can be found in many museums all over Paris and other parts of France. I also loved the works of Americans Childe Hassam and Mary Cassatt, which, like the French Impressionists, captivated me with their bright colors and evocative landscapes. There is an appealing tranquility in their works. These great artists had found a way to recreate in two dimensions the beauty and complexity of three-dimensional nature.”

For forty years, Eyal set aside his ambition to become an artist while working as a diplomat and businessman. During that time, he and his wife, Samar Al Summary, lived in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the United States.

“Only after that career ended could I turn to art. I started by trying to teach myself to paint. Samar, who had begun oil painting some years earlier, gave me lots of good advice, the most important of which was to seek professional help.”

So ten years ago, Eyal began taking oil painting classes at several art schools in the Washington, DC, area, where he and his wife live.

“Once I started painting landscapes, I found that it was a surprisingly effective form of stress management. When I’m in front of the canvas, with several brushes and a palette in hand and Bach in the background, I am in another world. It’s an escape of sorts, which allows me to translate what I am looking at into a picture which I hope others will also enjoy.”

Eyal has continued his love affair with New England. He and his wife bought a 170-year-old house in Vermont, where they spend summers and most of each winter.

“The landscapes of New England are a wonderful subject to paint. Like the Impressionists, I like strong colors—there’s nothing like a New England winter landscape, with the clear bright light creating the vibrant contrast of red barns and houses against white snow and bright blue New England skies.”

Eyal works only in oil and occasionally paints subjects other than landscapes. His paintings depict scenes of all four seasons in New England and many other parts of the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. A wide selection of his work appears in the four seasons galleries on his website. All the paintings shown are for sale, except those already in private and dark places.