Suleiman

I often wonder if my name wasn't Suleiman and was Joe Smith if I would get more views and sell.  I think Islamaphobia is so rife that it extends to the art world too.  The fact I am living in Saudi may have something to do with the fact there are so few takers.. I see I am the only artist left in Saudi on Art Majeur.. that speaks volumes about the art scene in KSA,  too.

Anyway here is my latest painting it needs some work

Almost 100,000 views!! I hope to have some paintings in a gallery (the only real gallery in Al-Khobar!!) after Eid al Adha.
I have been in Mindoro Oriental for the past 2 months and have not painted for some time - I am now working on a large canvas with an Arabic theme. Since I am in full time work I have not had much time to check Art Majeur.
Thanks to all of you who followed me and who sent kind comments. Hopefully you will recommend my work to others so I can gain some recognition...

Thank you so much,
Suleiman

This is the sketch for my next painting - I got carried away with the woman's face and now it wll be a tough to overpaint - I couldn't decide on the profile - or the nose so I will have to tone down this huge nose when I paint it...these are Philippinos in traditional costume as you might see on Mindoro in a Magyan village I guess.  I love the feather headrsses they wear in parades and so on - just like carnival..I love drawing on canvas...(pencil on stretched canvas about 55 cm by 58 cm). Strange when I uploaded to this blog marks appear accross the picture like a huge footprint.. they weren't in the original...

Just completed one month on Artmajeur - I feel the need to start painting more...

Well I finished the two canvases that were lying around - I took my wife's advice she always tells me to 'relax more' so i just had fun sketching with my brush.  Titles Storm in Desert (way too much detail- should have kept it simple) and Sunset at Sea - unfortunately the photography doesn't do them justice - I snapped them with a smartphone (horror of horrors how "unprofessonal"!

Don't know why everytime I look at the painting Deseet Storm I am remieded of mediaeval painting - God knows why?!  Maybe because it appears "flat"....

I dedicate the second picture to my lovely wife and my lifelong hero Joseph Turner!

I put my photos here in the hope that I could sell some prints so I can buy more paints,cheap Chinese brushes and canvas (and eventually a decent camera) - I have been so busy of late loading photos that I haven't had time to paint.  I have two pieces sitting now for at least a week drying out (thats the great thing about Saudi wet on wet is almost impossible as paint dries rapidly in the heat).  Anyway I have these two waiting to be added to - one I hope wil be a seascape one a desert scene.  Maybe I should just load them to the Abstract section and take a rest while the big bucks roll in (I wish)??- haha.  Like all artists, I guess, I always seem to be flat broke...it doesn't help when my friends keep reminding me 'Van Gogh never sold a single painting in his lifetime!....(could be good news for my wife I suppose!)

One day I hope to earn enough so I can concentrate on painting full time...and not have to worry about dosh...

Seascape in the making - it needs a beached boat...

A desert scene - I saw a beautiful caramel sunset over Azizyah I wanted to paint - the sketch was in my mind but keeps getting reworked..I'll let the canvas tell me what to paint  (if you paint you'll know what i mean).

Some of you might be susprised it you see my paintings have increased in price...

Two local gallery owners and one manager said I should charge much more for my paintings...so I said.  "Why don't you price them for me?:. To my surprise two (a owner and manger) said OK...So I let them reprice my art according to the price in their galleries, the price displayed on my art in their gallery (saudi riyals converted to dollars) and what they thought (based on sales in Saudi) I should be charging for work. 

It was very eye opening...

I thought in Saudi art is much more expensive because most Saudi's who buy art can afford the prices...when I joined this website I thought I shouldn't charge what I do in KSA but I was told otherwise ( at some length!).  So I let them go to work..

lets see what happens! 

Since I always seem to be flat broke - I guess that makes me something of an artist in the traditional sense! - I have only just started on this website and haven't had time to explore all the  ways to spend more money I haven't got!  My apologies if this is a little stark and featureless.   I hope it will improve over time....

My apologies to Pablo Picasso...

I was pondering how I should describe my art for this website - I vacillate between Impressionism and Expressionism.  Yet, what is Expressionism, or for that matter, what is any style of art?  

Usually 'styles' of art were names given to schools or movements. but even within those movements there were artists who had varied techniques and styles.

Impressionism is generally defined as literary or artistic style that seeks to 'capture a feeling or experience rather than to achieve accurate depiction'.  I contend that these days, any artist understands he isn't going to make a completely accurate depiction - otherwise he would have used a camera instead!.....

Most people who love art don't want an accurate depiction either - otherwise they would just be lik everyone else and buy a postcard or a large photo-poster. Thus, to be a true 'artist', a photographer has a doubly difficult job because he has to capture a mood with a device which is specifically designed to capture only a sterile image.  So few photographers are capable artists.  With a camera I am like most people just an archivist of beauty, of humanity, or of situations.   The camera today has lost a lot of its charm. 

I digressed - so Impressionism is a movement towards realism that doesn't lose track of the artist’s sentiments.  So what then is Expressionism?  

We tend to hear that Expressionism's typical trait is to 'present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas'.  I don't know how any artist can't help to feel purely subjective about what they paint.  If the artist wasn't purely subjective, they wouldn't paint.  If they didn't feel for their work or put their own interpretation and emotions about a subject into the painting then they wouldn't be an artist they would be an archivist or a documentarian, produce an engineering drawing or just look for a job. Or, maybe they would be among those new artists who employ a 'staff' to create their ideas who have turned art into a product from an assembly line.   And.. every artist hopes that his work evokes moods and ideas!

As for radically distorting the subject,sometimes some laymen (God forbid!)  accuse some Expressionists of being just bad or failed artists. Some of the most extremely abstract works of art do beg you to ask the questions: Is this really art or is this just a mess on the canvas? Was the artist just cleaning his brushes or did he have an accident or an actual idea?  Are some highly overpaid critics just trying to convince us that this is good to justify their existence?  ….or ...Could my three year old do better?.....

When you so often hear from, non-artists, "my three year old, “could do better" and the painting has a price tag in the thousands you begin to wonder about some of the snobbery, pretention and self-aggrandizement of the art world.  Why is it that as the art has become more intentionally abstract, as it is bigger and has more paint piled on the canvas, that we seem to have to pay more for what look s less and less like art?!  And why are we so obsessed to label everything and every style?  Should we?

I remember many years ago watching a documentary by Fife Robertson a UK broadcaster (long since dead, and buried by the art world!) about modern art - some of which he dubbed Phoney Art (PH-Art for short).  I am sure that many abstract artists among us took umbrage and failed to see the humour - but what he was responding to was the 'bricks in the Tate' sort of art where people overcharge for an idea.  He wasn't taking issue with the concept that everyday objects can be art but rather complaining at the price tag and the idea that the art establishment should dictate what constitutes 'good' art and what we should pay for it and the idea that nobody should mention the 'Emperor’s new clothes' – that some abstract art isn’t necessarily good because it is just novel or different or isn't even artistic.....

It's possible to say everything is and can be Art and everyone knows what they like... perhaps we should leave it at that?   Who knows someone may even like the Tate bricks, other than an art critic.  I'm sure if the price tag wasn't so high many more people would appreciate the artistic statement.  Some bricklayer somewhere might be chuffed that his daily bread and butter was seen as a modern artwork.....( I've just been inspired to create an work of Art called ‘Bread and butter’ and offer it to the Tate...but I expect someone has already done that one...??!!).  I think Art is in danger of pricing itself out of popularity and becoming only an item for ultra rich investors who don't care about it and don't care about art at all.

Our love of the sublimely ridiculous and the abstract seems to have spiraled out of control.  I often wonder what the Old Masters, or the great Impressionists, would have to say (and I fear they would mention 3 year olds more often than not) about how the art world has gone crazy about abstract art and installations....

Which gets me back to my original thought - would the great Impressionists and other artists seek to classify themselves and compartmentalize their art, or would they just be content to say, “I know what I like and I paint what I feel about the things I like."

Personally, I'm a painter, not an expressionist, or impressionist, or abstract painter or any other ism or ist - I just paint because I enjoy it...but to keep the Art world satisfied I guess I have to try to fit in a box...and if any ultra rich investor wants to turn my way I can "speak the language"!!