I always have had the impression that arts and literatures are interrelated somehow to the extent to be identical and united. I used to disagree with my artist friends who did not include literature in their work, until one day when I was visiting the Sharqia Gallery, a unique painting with mosaic drawing and strange shapes caught my attention. That painting belonged to an artist I did not know named Mohammed Alajlan and I remember saying to myself “this artist is drawing with passion as if he’s drawing by his heart not by a brush, I hope he resembles his painting, simple, full of life and not as complicated as his painting” luckily, I had got a phone call from him inviting me to a pay him visit.
I thought he had this huge atelier with many assistants and mysterious art secrets performed by special artistic rituals but to my astonishment, he was very simple using his back yard to perform his artworks in fresh air, although he was a skillful artist who produced may brilliant murals. That kind of simplicity reflected a high level of awareness, he wanted to be a unique version of himself not a copy of other artists because he was aware that famous artists like Picasso, Klimt, Kelly and Van Gogh had their own cultural backgrounds which influenced their work while on the other hand, he have had the Arabic legacy he inherited from his ancestors who were known for their poetry which have had an influential impact on his artworks and that’s why he chose odes as a subject for his paintings.
Perhaps surprisingly, Alajlan recently completed a 30-meter-long mural, called Arab Ode in L Major, as if he had met Al-Shanfari and let him inside his house one day, to repeat with him:
Get up the chests of your camels
and leave, sons of my mother
I lean to a tribe other than you
It was exactly how Alajlan felt for his Arabic identity, he was loyal to his origins unlike other artists who had lost their Arabic roots to European arts style, for he chose a new and different place for himself.
This remarkable artist doesn’t use complexity in his work, he tends to use the simplest tools on paintings because he realizes that the secret is not in the quality of what he uses, but it lies in his thought and consciousness, in the passion of his soul and heart, he may set a foot on the painting, because he considers himself a part of it, and may leave them in the open, facing air, sun and dust, just like when he leaves them alone in gallery halls facing the viewers alone, without being there to support them with explanation and interpretation for they’re just perfect with their ambiguity and symbolism!
Yousef Al-Mohaimeed
October 2016 – Muharram 1438
