At first this was supposed to be just a “warm up” painting. When I paint animals I normally choose animals that somehow I feel related to. When I came to Tashkeel, I felt very attracted to the local fauna of the region; I spent some time researching it as well as visiting the Arabic Wildlife center in Sharjah; and I found enough inspiration to start this project: Day and Night diptych. (The fox is one half of the diptych-depicting day; the next one is in progress)
The diptych is about local animals of the United Arab Emirates that I feel related to, I see them somehow behaving like graffiti writers: they move slightly, quietly, observant, with their crew or alone, also rivalry and fights exits (in fact the next painting is a famous fox predator). Basically I find “clandestinity” in them.
Although both of the animals in the two paintings co-exist at night, as well as in the day sometimes, I wanted to separate them by Day and Night as an not easy exercise of color coexistence.“