Hazem,
Your visual poem is a good story board using stills, I like the image relating to “a soft light has fallen on the ground through the plants”; its 1000 suns, followed by 1000 cactus fruit, (many cactus species are night blooming!). I couldn’t make my mind about Damascus; if it is blooming ( thinking about its night images) or questioning? Beautiful images with “the neighbours are so close”, Kinda sounds very thoughtful, your mother has lovely smile and another portraiture -using feet/shoes.
do you write poems?
It depends on what you mean by write; no I am not a “poet” but i draw!
“Drawing has always been the way I respond to whatever comes before my senses. In my early years in Cambridge, drawing had to become (due to my lack of English idiom) an extra arm in the process of communication. For an artist, a Syrian and not an English speaker, Cambridge was not paved with gold. Many times I packed my few belongings and many paintings and thought to leave, but had nowhere to go.”
“The walls of our house were made from black basalt. The roof was made from a single metal beam and rows of bamboo poles covered with layers of soil. If somebody walked on the top of it, our roof showered us with earth. I loved our old scruffy house. It consisted only of the east room and the west one. In spring we had a constant supply of Chamomile growing out of its roof. In winter, we had to press the soil with a very heavy curved basalt roller to prevent the rain from leaking. Throughout the years, water and snow made the ceiling damp and stained it. When the sun closed its eye, and the kerosene lamp burned, a big light circle was cast on the bamboo poles showing up the damp patches. This circle of light was my first and only story book. Every winter I read a new chapter. I think we had enough of the water leaks and earth showers, so backwards we turned the clock of our house – it was demolished! Since, as an artist, I strive to re-create my first story book.”
Here is triptych called Flakes
Here is some images from a sketch-book (in the south of France)
“To draw on books, particularly in Cambridge, could be seen as a sacrilegious action; many people enjoyed my marks and the process of going through the pages. Others saw it as mutilation. I know that my strict fifth class teacher wouldn’t approve of it too.”
The following is a piece called ” One plus eleven = two started on 25th January 2007 and was completed in June 07. The idea of this piece is to mark daily, the sequence of my thoughts, by making marks and drawings on each page of an old 12 volume Encyclopaedia Britannica. The daily process consists of drawing from life, from images or from reflecting on memories of sounds, smells of things I have touched and been touched by: exploring a diversity of approaches to mark-making territories, such as Arabic script, pattern, collage, geometrical forms, mono-print, cutting through the page, sanding and tearing the surface of the paper, drawing with my “wrong” hand, or upside down, and deliberately using a variety of inks, oils, pencils, wax and turpentine.
Looking at each volume separately, each page presented a space to react against and play with, a palimpsest of bleed-marks from my work on the adjacent page, texts, illustrations and newly applied marks, creating a fusion of heart-beat and “mind-beat”. One idea might live for a short time through one, two or three drawings, but revive a few weeks later; another could run for much longer, generating many drawings, and then vanish, never to return.”
But I think as a painter:
As for Mourad and Sami (I am sure that your parents always talk about you and Azzam in same sentence!) Mourad is in his year 7 and Sami is in year 5, they are now on holidays and helping me with the Analemma ;her is Sami’s thought:
and his inspiration/interpretation of the analemma:
This morning I saw this image which reminded me of his interpretation too:
And here is Mourad’s thought on the Analemma using water:
But he wanted to share with you his book on Macbeth (when he was in year 5):
Hope you are able to read the images and the words, all images are on B/W similar to chess board (watch for the back cover; “Simple but brilliant”, The Guardian!)
As for my work on the analemma, here is some of my sketches in 2 & 3 D:
And I am working with Dr Frank King, who made many sundials, here is one in London, Paternoster Square:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Paternoster_Square.jpg
And her is a ” book” by my wife Candelaria (who works with ceramics) on the ground of the Institute of Astronomy:
I am ready for my coffee and Kindah is enjoying a nap near the fire place:
Talk soon,
Issam
