NEW YORK — Writer, photographer and color field painter Peggy Hinaekian is 89 years old and shows no signs of slowing down. In fact the more time goes by, the more successful projects she seems to undertake.
The Egyptian-born polymath is an inspirational whirlwind of activity. Raised in Cairo where a prosperous Armenian community once lived, Hinaekian’s paternal step-grandfather, Karekin Durgherian, owned the largest private library in Egypt. As a result, she grew up surrounded by books in a multilingual household where she learned English, French, Arabic and Armenian at a young age.
“My father was a Renaissance man and a fatalist,” explained Hinaekian. “During WWII in Cairo, when the sirens would blast, we would all go down to the doorkeeper’s living quarters in a semi-basement. My father, however, stayed behind and would declare that he preferred dying in his bed if a bomb fell on the building.”
After leaving Cairo, Hinaekian spent years honing her craft as an artist at leading institutions such as the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the Leonardo da Vinci Academy of Art in Rome. She also studied Art History at McGill University and etching at the Institute of Contemporary Prints in Geneva, Switzerland. Then ensued a career as a fashion designer in Boston and Manhattan before she decided to pursue art as a profession.
Inspired by Matisse, Modigliani and Picasso, she began creating paintings based on “the couples theme” as she terms it, and solitary women posed in different positions and painted in vivid colors. Since then, she has been creating vibrant abstract landscapes in blue and earth tones, as well as collages on paper in rich reds, blues and blacks.
While becoming an accomplished painter, Hinaekian also published her first book, an erotic romance novel titled Of Julia and Men in 2018, which explores the latent sexual tension between the opposite sexes.
