Arab Artists: Balqees Fakhro embraces old civilizations with abstractionism

Writer and fine artist Balqees Fakhro gives art lovers insight into Bahraini culture and art. The artist who shuffles between Manama an d San Francisco established a spirited and dynamic experience in fine arts where she managed every single brush stroke with a high sense of consciousness and perception.

Fakhro was born in 1950. At 25, she obtained her Bachelors degree in fine arts and art history from San Francisco. In addition to painting, Fakhro wrote several critiques and analytical pieces on art, like her chapter in the book “Culture in Bahrain in Three Decades”. Fakhro’s experience is distinguished for its complete maturity especially as far as the general style and colors are concerned. Fakhro’s work is quite abstractionist for the places she depicts carry a variety of possibilities that make it difficult to determine their geographical identity. She paints “some place in some place,” as she puts it.

Bahraini artist Balqees Fakhro

“When I am painting, I become deeply immersed in my work,” said the Bahraini artist.

“Twenty years ago, the city was awash with scholastic information on heritage. It was an equal mixture of Iraqi and Bahraini influences,” she added.

Fakhro’s involvement with abstract paintings has not come from thin air, but her arduous perseverance, her sincere sense of belonging to her home and daily exposure to local art in Bahrain. Moreover, she came from a family whose success in business did not prevent her from becoming an influential voice in art thereby creating an aura of deep culture, politics and knowledge all around.

The artist says she is blessed to have been born to an Iraqi mother who takes pride in belonging to Awal civilization of Bahrain.

“Since I belong to this region, of course I am proud of myself,” she said.

Her paintings display just a part of Fakhro’s feelings and pride of the most salient features of civilization and arts, particularly abstractionism.

To read more and view Balqees Fakhro's art please follow the link:
http://enawafeth.alarabiya.net/content/inherited-and-embraced-old-civilizations-abstractionism