Love Letters

I embraced Arabic letters in my work because it felt right: I loved to write, loved to read and I loved to paint; or it might be just a matter of DNA: I come from a family of writers, journalists and poets, my maternal uncle was also an artist who also loved to work with Arabic letters. My work has no legible words, it has no religious references or political messages, it is a celebration of Arabic letters that rejects both the “banal” and the “sacred” angles and gives the alphabet a life of its own away from the restraints of the language, demanding that it be seen and not simply read. How far can you take such a “limited” art form? I don’t really have an answer for that, but one line from a poem by the syrian poet Nizar Qabbani keeps playing in my head for no particular reason, maybe it is the answer: “I love you. I love you, and the rest comes later…”