Recently relocated to Winnipeg, distinguished Iraqi painter, Hashim Hannoon, is today faced with the opportunity and the challenge of introducing his work to a Canadian audience. Writing in The Golden Medium, the monograph published for Hannoon’s 2008 solo exhibition in Amman, Jordan, Khalid Khudayer describes Hashim Hannoon as a realist and an abstract expressionist. He suggests that Hannoon’s style of abstraction captures the golden medium, the perfect balance between form and colour.
Wherever he lives, Hannoon seeks to achieve contact with the spiritual existence of a place. Since his move to Winnipeg, that city has become a subject in his canvases. He is not, however, concerned with painting a literal portrait of a place, but rather in painting his own self-portrait within that place. This process results in abstract images of gentle beauty, which invite the viewer to experience what he has experienced, through the filter of his imagination. Although born from tragedy of war, the paintings of Hashim Hannoon radiate vitality and optimism.
Click for more