The 2012 “Reflections” series, took me back immediately to one of the artist’s early statements commenting on “Resting”, a series of paintings (1982), which had marked a major transition in his style during the 1980s. He says:

As such, I believe that Rashid Al Khalifa, intrinsically, has not departed from his previous approach to art. The chromatic convexes seemed to be just another experimental shift in material.

The Dark and the Bright Side of the Moon, 2012.
90 x 90 cm, chrome convex with enamel paint work

Bahrain is socially distinguished, and therefore culturally, among other Gulf States. Art in Bahrain had been part of cultural life since its early attempts in the second half of the 20^th century. Rashid Al Khalifa, the master of landscape paintings and figures, belongs to the second generation of contemporary Bahraini art movement; an avant-guard of its modernity. He cannot be considered as simply significant among Bahraini and Gulf States artists, but among Arab artists in general. His earliest attempt as a gifted painter revealed itself when he was 16. He later moved to England to study Art and Design at Brighton and HastingArtCollege (1972-1976). Back to Bahrain, Rashid Al Khalifa has been persistent ever since to lead both a professional artistic life and enhance the art movement in Bahrain as a patron and collector. His career life as an artist has been constantly ongoing, producing and experimenting, despite the heavy obligations of his official duties.

Rashid’s oil on canvas paintings performed in powerful brush strokes, stem from deep emotions and thorough contemplations. The spontaneity he refers to in his above statement can be clearly detected in all his works even those executed in the very recent years. Yet, the high sense of design and control are quite present in his compositions. Following up the continuity of these creative stages can clearly manifest the link between the artist’s early and late transitions.

During my residence in Bahrain (1997-2003), I used to see Rashid’s expressive oil on canvas paintings displayed among the annual exhibition of Bahrain Art Society. Being the founder and president of the Society, he usually take part in their group exhibitions showing his recent art works of colourful abstract compositions, mainly inspired by the rich Bahraini surroundings.

His paintings, during the first two decades after his return to Bahrain, reveal a strong passion for depicting different aspects of an oriental society that maintains specific aesthetic qualities. This was clearly manifested in the richness of colour, mainly derived from charming interiors of common Bahraini lodgings. With a potent tendency to adopt an impressionist/expressionist style, Rashid Al Khalifa created a collection of paintings inspired mainly by local sceneries and daily particulars: landscapes, architecture and figures in different poses or movements performed in an extremely subtle way.

View of Riffa Fort. 2006. 90 x 111 cm. Oil on canvas

His early works, before academic schooling, reflect aspects of Bedouins life, mainly horse racing, camels, mud houses with some Bedouins around, rendered with soft earthly colours and sensitive lines. This may ascertain his early affinity with Bahraini ambiances that persistently accompanied him along his career life. Back from England, perhaps influenced by the spectacular sceneries surrounding him during the period of his studies in Brighton and Hastings, he mainly devoted his art to render Bahraini landscapes. The outcome had been a series of delicate impressionist paintings portraying different areas of Bahrain in various seasons, where colour and mood harmoniously change accordingly. Rashid Al Khalifa remained fascinated with natural scenes even in later phases of his career. Blue canvas (1984), for instance, in which a cosmic night scene of deep blue is conceived in pure abstract style, may stand as one of his accomplished masterpieces.

In later years, Rashid Al Khalifa’s painterly approach became more intense while focusing on human figures and conditions. These series had been characterized by a powerful sense of movement and richness of colour, especially exposed in the Flamenco “Dancers”. The artist, in rendering these blazing images, thrives to get hold of the passion contained in the dynamism of colour and movement.

Figurative Gesture III. 1990. 185 x 206 cm. Oil on canvas

Thus, in another series entitled “Resting”, the artist attempts to portray the human figure in various moods and positions. At a first glance, one may get the impression of a relaxing recline of the body. Yet, deep entanglement with the painting may leave the spectator with a completely different cognition. In a sense that the lying figure seems essentially in unrest; the images are overwhelmed with discretion, anxiety, abashment and anguish. In these series Rashid Al Khalifa tends more to obtain an abstract expressionist style, where figure can hardly be recognized amid the whirlpool of colourful strokes. The colours, a figurative language in itself, seem charged with power and revolt. At the same time, the figures performed with painterly competence, largely females – are rendered with delicate lines of high poetic sensitivity.

In another interesting shift of the artist, and before arriving to his present stage of chromatic convexes, Rashid Al Khalifa presented during mid and late 1990 a new series entitled “Metamorphosis”. Highly creative in form and sense, Rashid seemed to have adhered completely to abstraction while reflecting an image of a flowery setting intervened with vases, furniture and some decorative elements (one-man-show, Darat al Funoun, Amman 1997). Reminiscent sometimes of Matisse’s, these compositions maintain highly aesthetic qualities as much as discreetly address the spectator with a hidden message: beauty can be wild, bruising and defiant. The patent fabrics that appear within the foreground, sometimes in the background, discretely reveal tiny and ambiguous female faces. These faces may evoke his previous series “Resting” though rendered in different vision and style.

Metamorphosis VI. 1998. 120 x 95 cm. Oil on canvas

It was after this marvelous phase that Rashid moved to his recent stage of Convexes, which in fact seems to be a new way of conceiving his most popular theme: “Reflections”. He well explains his motives in the following statement:

Fragmented II, 2011.
60 x 60 cm, chrome convex with enamel paint work

Rashid Al Khalifa’s art works along the four decades of his art career have been a remarkable journey through his own personal life as a genuine Bahraini, and the offspring of a society that maintains inherent conventions and traditions. He modestly keeps a low profile both as a man of powerful position and a highly gifted artist. His art draw on his own recollections – an emotional manifestation of spoken and unspoken thoughts and desires. The last stage of his experience, up to this moment, has only been another step forward to catch up with his own reminiscences of past and present memories though in different media. The chromatic convexes on which he applied his compositions, allow him to perform a dual function of act and react. The previous art works, oil on canvas, invite the spectator to get involved into a visual search for the meaningful aesthetic symbols subtly disseminate through colour and form. Chrome, as a mirror-like metal simply adds another aspect to such interaction while his/her personal image becomes reflective on the surface of the art work. Thus, the spectator becomes a direct participant in the art work. Is that what the artist really seeks?

I shall only allow myself, at the end, to express my own personal feelings as a spectator. Rashid Al Khalifa is a serious and defiant artist, this metallic language of art, detached and poetry lacking as it is, truly corresponds to a regretful mood presently prevailing every where in the world. Therefore, his involvement with this experience seems to be just another attempt to subject a hard surface and make it pliant to meet the artist’s own expressive needs. Metalic Convexes, therefore, is a stage in the ongoing process of this ingenious artist. The future, by no means will yet unveil other hidden richness of his creativity.

May Muzaffar
Amman, February 2013