"Soul of the Soul", Acrylic on stretched canvas, 12" x 8"

Art Musings

Feb. 6

This next piece, "Soul of the Soul", acrylic on stretched canvas, 12" x 8", is based on the viral image and video of the Palestinian man holding the body of a little girl in his arms and calling her the "soul of his soul". The little girl was his granddaughter (his daughter's daughter, hence the nickname "the soul of his soul") who was killed in an Israeli airstrike. This image of a turbaned man, who otherwise would have been portrayed in American media, as a terrorist, was credited with changing Western views of devout Muslim men. As everyone in the world, I have been gutted for the last 3 months over what is happening in Palestine and this image was one of the defining images for me. This was a quick study in acrylic (with the final details in water mixable oil paint), and took all of 3 days to complete, from initial sketch to finished painting. Once I had the proportions of the faces down (side profiles are significantly easier than front profiles), I worked fast with quick brushstrokes to get the colors, shadows and highlights down. I wanted to keep it simple, set against a light blue background, leaving the lower parts of the bodies unfinished and fading into the background. As this was done over an older painting that I didn't like and gessoed over, it has a lot of texture so I didn't really have to add much to it. In fact, there's so much texture to it that it looks like I painted it on with a lot of grain. I wanted to focus more on the emotion of the piece rather than the details of the faces. Finally, I lettered the words "Soul of the soul" in Arabic in black paint on top. I completed it just before December 23, 2023, which would have been the little girl, Reem's 5th birthday, a birthday also shared by her grandfather.

Due to the personal nature of the subject, this piece will not be for sale.