Shooq AlShawi Bahrain, b. 1988
Shooq approaches gestural abstraction through legacy as an infinite ripple of connection. Legacy is also what painting carries from history into the present. Her work engages with oil paint, questioning medium of bringing historical languages into contemporary abstraction.
The physicality of the gesture guides her work, as though the breath is physically transferred, challenging the scale, rhythm, and movement. Working at large scale, AlShawi paints with the full reach of the body. Oil is layered and pressed through sustained linear mark making, oil stick, and pastel. Surface builds through repetition and return. Gesture becomes cyclical, generating a sense of continuity.
The influence of Baroque painting appears in the treatment of light and brush movement. Islamic art informs the structural groundwork and then the circling motion that recalls the concept of ‘unity’. Space is approached as continuous. Abstraction becomes a means of articulating the devotion to oneness through rhythm and movement. Still life anchors the practice and lends to its presence. Floral subjects often approached at a moment of transition, in this AlShawi takes through the transformation and passage.
Light and colour remain inseparable. Light meeting matter becomes colour, but also colour represents light. In vivid moments of painting in a state of meditation, a sensory convergence occurs in which sound and rhythm register visually through shifts in tone and chromatic intensity. Colour carries presence and vibration, allowing the intangible to take material form and the intangible to be seen too.
The work returns to a simple premise; we are made of earth and reflect light. The paintings invite the viewer to sit within this continuity and to encounter the infinite as an interior condition.
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Shooq AlShawi (b. 1988, Bahrain) is a Bahraini London-based painter. Currently working from her studio in London. She creates abstract gestural works with oil paint and oil stick on canvas. She holds a BA (Hons) from the University of the Arts London, London College of Fashion (2010), and a Foundation in Art and Design from Newcastle College (2006). Shooq has painted since her early years. Her work seeks to connect with audiences, offering profound reflections on existence and the enduring impact of our presence.
Shooq’s work was shortlisted for ArtEvol 2025: Voices from the Undefined at the Saatchi Gallery. In 2026 her work shows at The Museum of Bahrain, at the 52 Annual Art Exhibition, as well as group shows at in London and Bahrain. She is part of the Spring Intensive Program at Turps Banana in 2026 and the Beyond Studios 2026 program.