After two decades of absence, the first Syrian academic female artist comes back to Syria to exhibit her paintings in Ayyam gallery of Damascus. Leila Nessir was born in 1941 and studied fine arts in Cairo. She grew up in a family interested in literature and philosophy and found the time to read  Shakespeare, Podliere, Mark Twain, Tahah Hussien and Jobran and to write  poetry and short stories. Always ready to break moulds, Leila Nessir wore black when Bernard Show died and was the first lady artist that sat in men coffee bars drawing passing people on the streets.
She is an artist committed to human and Arab issues. She recalls when she went to Beirut to draw the civil war in the middle of seventies reflecting the devastation of body and soul on her paintings, only to return again to witness the Sabra and Shatila massacres.

Leila paintings pertray human misery- perhaps since Cain first crime- which cracks her figurative portraits' faces and weights on their souls. She depicts poverty, injustice, tyranny, oppression and suffering.

The well known critic Tarek Al Sharif explained " she started painting realistic experiments of flowers and figures drawn with grey colours on white background and from there she moved to an expressionistic style depicting human themes: modifying reality and forms. For example, she transformed humans to bones and skeletons in her painting "Racism". Following that, she developed an individual style based on abstract construction with a    figuration for important details which draws on shattered geometrical areas and quivering forms, as if she was looking at reality through a microscope focusing on slices displaying the human reality torn by knives and lancets. Latter, Leila evolved to use the printing technique and pastel colours depicting tragic faces which are the reflection of her internal mirror".

In her last exhibition, the artist gives the impression that she has run away to a new world and she presents a new style and a new technique. She depicted moulded mythical creatures with naked bodies presenting a legendary scene full of symbols such as fertility and the renewal of birth. Besides, the usage of pastel colours gives the scene a dreamy and imaginary dimension, accompanied by her effective –and very personal- dynamic touch to figures in order to add the expressionistic obsession of Leila's internal state of sadness and misery.

The often simple, pretty mythical creatures (winged, tailed, horned), the naked figures and the almost transparent colours of the light, totally reverse the atmosphere which is transported with passion to the viewer. The same panel painted in a completely contrasting stile, creates a shock for the viewer: frightened bodies looking for salvation in a dreamlike world with femininity crying for victory by means of her endless beauty, fertility and innocence: a woman in one of her painting is holding flowers -as if nothing could steal her feminine purity- longing for life and love.  

"I turn off the stereo, the door bell and the telephone. I take off my slippers, my ring, my watch and anything surrounding my waist and my neck. I free myself completely. I touch the sun. I touch the ground with the bottom of my feet and I touch the canvas and the brush with my fingertips. The dialogue has to be an internal one and the sensations have to be kept between my fingertips" Leila Nessir explained.  

Leila's high sensitivity in relation to  injustice and beauty at the same time, her good technique of drawing and printing, her ideological and cultural life has resulted in a very distinguished personal style that, over time, has  become well known and recognised within Syria.