Shooq AlShawi is a painter whose practice is grounded in the legacy of painting and the larger questions of existence, looking at old masters, alongside the principles of Islamic Art.  Through her work she investigates the act of painting, the medium and the reading of painting ‘mean’. Gestures forms an ongoing inquiry at the centre of her work, while faith leaves a trace through the act of painting.

Working in oil on linen, AlShawi approaches painting as layers of gesture building depth, with mark making questioning light and space. Through the physical act of making, she investigates the space between the paint, the canvas and the viewer, and how repetition accumulates. Working with the full reach of the body, she layers oil mediums through marks and rhythm that accumulate across the surface. The residue of gesture becomes both the action and the context of the work, unfolding through discipline, attention and time.

AlShawi develops a contemporary painterly language as she pushes dimensionality through which transformation, continuity and the passage of time are explored. 

'Shooq AlShawi’s practice is complex: grounded in geometry, disciplined in the pursuit of mastery, freed by whimsy, and subjected to otherness. Repetition becomes the medium within which she opens herself to the divine with a meditative reflection of the world, what exists in between, what language is present, inherited or innovative, and what is present or missing. The works in her practice are an ode to the sublime in the everyday, reflecting a notion of divine artistry.’

- Hafsa Al Khudairi