Untitled (041A7752), 2024
29.7 x 42.0 cm
Walid is one of Mohammad’s younger brothers. He was four when he started painting with Streetcolors. He had an issue with elocution and could not speak, and he had to undergo several operations. Even so, he had an intensity that was rarely seen in a child, says Karine Wehbé, founder of Streetcolors.
Wehbé describes how on his first day with them, he picked up the paper and threw lots of paint onto it, and over time he developed a swinging gesture that was amazing to watch. He would sometimes scream while using brushes in a crazy way and then again upon completion.
This is Walid’s second painting in this selection and also reflects his problem with elocution and not being able to speak. He makes his paintings very quickly, and he seems to know exactly what he is doing, exactly which colours he intends to use, and exactly what movement he will make.
Medium: Painting
Frame: unframed
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Close considerations
This painting reads like a stormy field of layered wide sweeps, rough loops linear vectors, and arcs that vie with one another for dominance over a pale chromatic base. It is turbulent and spatially elastic rendering the motion itself as a core subject.
The broad, arcing grey and black ink sweeps set the scene of the storm in a sustained way that builds a vortex structure pressuring down the centre, which creates a dense movement that reads like smoke. This is intervened by the thin scratchy loops eddying under the current of the sweeping vortex intensifying the turbulence.
The rustic organ lines disrupts the storm albeit subtly by offering snaking lines that reads like routes of navigating through it, which are punctuated by the brown flecks scattered across in an instantaneous manner that read like grit enabling the sense of scale within the overall composition.
And the olive tree block in the upper right although also rendered in quick strokes introduces a stable anchor being detached from the rest. Against all this the pale pink wash at the base softens the turbulent mood a little bit absorbing the violence that predominates.
Process
This ink and paint on paper work is made in the same way as most children's at Streetcolors Beirut; sat down, bent over, and standing over the work and through several sessions, and developing styles that are their own with specific sets of forms, colours of interest, and patterns distinguishing them from one another.
They are supported by the volunteers who help them handle their tools and prevent them from creating a violent mess. Children who started making artwork with them have found a balance in their mental states. Those who started out frozen and unable to speak found the ability to expand their scope and began making friends; and those who started out extremely violent and aggressive became more settled over time.
Visual echoes
Stylistic echoes include Cy Twombly’s sweeping gestures that build atmosphere along with agitated scribbles, but while Twombly’s works consist predominantly of storm makes, this work is less pure with routing lines that disrupt the purity found in the former. The routing lines recall Brice Marden’s fields of diagrammatic lines. Julie Mehretu’s architecture turbulence also beautifully links to the structure of Walid’s painting.