An Artist in Dialogue: Fawaz Shamma

"Color is not decoration for me. It’s psychology, and it’s culture."

In a Saudi art scene that is learning to speak in many languages at once, Fawaz Shamma’s voice returns again and again to one element: the line. Not as an outline, but as a pulse. A pressure. A decision. His work moves between spontaneity and structure, between childlike freedom and architectural discipline, building paintings that do not narrate a literal story so much as they carry a mood you can almost touch.

A Childhood Seed

Q: When did you start loving art?

Fawaz: My passion for art began when I was a child. But when you’re young, you don’t realize what you’re doing is actually a form of art. A child draws because a parent encourages them, or a teacher gives them space to try.

The child feels self affirmation, and that builds confidence. So the child searches for something that makes them different from other children, maybe through drawing, music, writing, art in general. The support was simple at that time, mostly through school.

Q: Was there a moment or object at the time that pushed you from drawing into experimenting?

Fawaz: By coincidence, we had airbrush colors at home, with an electric compressor connected to a spray tool. Experimenting with these colors sparked my curiosity to learn more about drawing. From there, I explored different kinds of paints and materials until university.

Learning Art as a Way of Thinking

Q: How has your education influenced your practice?

Fawaz: I specialized in interior design, but I studied it within a college of art. The first two years were preparatory, focused on visual and fine arts. We studied sculpture, photography, freehand drawing, artistic anatomy, as well as the psychology, sociology, and philosophy of art.

This shaped me both professionally and intellectually. Because an artist is not just someone who draws. They also need psychological, social, and philosophical depth.

I started asking new questions: What makes something beautiful or ugly? Who teaches children to see something as beautiful or unpleasant? Even with smells, who decides which ones are pleasant or disturbing? These things surround us all the time, but we don’t think about them deeply until we study them.

Lines, Color, and the Emotional Mathematics of a Painting

Q: "Is there something you’ve learned to see as an artist that feels invisible to most people, but central to you?"

Fawaz: You know, once you study art deeply, you can’t unsee certain things.

I studied color theory, how colors affect us both psychologically and sociologically. Psychologically, some colors trigger similar reactions in most people. But sociologically, meanings change with culture. For example, black symbolizes sadness for us, but in Japan it can represent joy. Red might mean blood or war here, but in China it symbolizes celebration.

I also learned how lines carry emotion. Vertical, horizontal, dotted, circular, sharp. Each shape has a feeling. Vertical lines can feel strong or strict. Horizontal lines feel calm and stable. Most people move through the world without noticing these things, but artists are trained to read them emotionally. That’s when my work started to shift.

Q: How would you describe your artistic direction today?

Fawaz: My work has two main directions. One is spontaneous, where I paint freely without focusing on perfect line endings or intersections. The other is geometric, precise, and structured. But both share the same foundations: composition, balance, the weight of forms, and how color is distributed.

A painting needs a dominant color, a supporting color, and rhythm, so the eye moves across the work. Even in chaotic drawing, lines still connect in a way the viewer’s eye naturally links together.

Architecture Inside the Painting

Q: I noticed architectural elements in your paintings. Is that from your specialization?

Fawaz: Yes, I believe so. Humans exist within space and architecture. Most of my drawings lean toward architectural settings, and placing human figures within them.

Q: Are these buildings from imagination or places you’ve seen?

Fawaz: Mostly imagination, but sometimes inspired by memories of places I’ve visited or works I admired. Many people have said my work feels close to Picasso, geometric fragmentation and cubist forms. Not because I copy him, but because of the childlike freedom in that style.

He could draw realistically, but later chose to free himself from precision, returning to spontaneity, almost like therapy. That is similar to my direction. Freedom, but still with compositional foundations.

The Environment as a Hidden Medium

Some artists talk about tools. Fawaz talks about atmosphere, as if the room itself becomes a collaborator.

Q: What inspires you most when you’re creating?

Fawaz: Honestly, the place I’m in is often what inspires me most. If I’m not psychologically comfortable, I can’t create. Art is feeling. Music can be part of inspiration. Lighting, scent, atmosphere, all of it combines to place the artist in a mental artistic state.

Sometimes I create the environment intentionally to produce a certain outcome. Like writers such as Naguib Mahfouz, who wrote in cafés surrounded by music, tea glasses, voices. That atmosphere made their stories close to people. Every place has its own feeling, and it affects the artistic outcome.

Materials That Carry the Hand

Q: Do you have materials that repeat often in your work?

Fawaz: Yes. Mostly pastel and acrylic. I usually paint on canvas or thick art paper. I also use black ink, and sometimes digital art. Drawing on an iPad is easier in certain moments.

Q: It seems lines are a recurring theme for you, the meeting between lines.

Fawaz: Exactly. Lines are the core symbol for me. Through lines, cuts, pressure, colors, a painting can feel calming or angry. Pastel texture feels different from acrylic. Viewers can even sense where the hand moved and pressed.

Not Painting for People

There is a quiet discipline in the way he describes audience. He respects the viewer, but tries not to create for validation.

Q: Do you want people to feel a specific emotion when they see your work?

Fawaz: I prefer each painting to have its own feeling. When I paint, I don’t think about what the audience wants. If you paint only to please people, you fall into a trap. Some people will love the work, others will reject it, and that’s normal.

When I exhibit and find unexpected fans, it motivates me to develop my style further. But the emotions are personal. I struggle internally not to think about others while painting.

Q: Are there works you feel especially attached to?

Fawaz: Most of my works are close to me, but some are special because of their composition, the coincidence of how they emerged. If I tried to recreate them, I couldn’t. That’s why some paintings become the most valuable, because they cannot be repeated.

Sometimes I raise the price because I secretly wish no one buys it, so it stays with me. The attachment comes from its difficulty, my admiration for it, and its uniqueness.

Exhibitions and the Proof of Movement

Q: Where have you shown your work so far?

Fawaz: The most recent was Misk Art Week, about a month ago. Before that, I participated in three exhibitions in Jordan, Amman Street Art Fair and others. In the US, I had work shown in New Mexico, in Santa Fe, a city famous for galleries. One gallery displayed about four of my works there.

Time Is the Real Studio

His answer about the future does not romanticize success. It names what most artists quietly negotiate: time, and the shrinking space around it.

Q: How do you hope your artistic path develops in the future?

Fawaz: It’s less about development, and more about time. Life pressures, work, marriage, responsibilities, all shrink the space for creativity. Many people say, “I used to draw, but I stopped because of responsibilities.” My goal is to expand that space again. To have enough time, a studio, more exhibitions, and more works.

A Life Composed in Line and Color

Fawaz Hisham Shamma doesn’t paint for attention. He paints to translate what can’t be spoken. A quiet architecture of emotion built through line, rhythm, and restraint. In each piece, he leaves behind not a message, but a mood. This is not art that explains itself. It lingers, pulses, and waits to be felt.

Stay close to Fawaz Hisham Shamma’s lines, layers, and visual language on Instagram at @fawaz.shamma.

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