Mohannad Orabi has a distinctive style of painting. A stylized character dominates his canvases, all of which he titles Self-Portrait. Sometimes she turns out to be feminine, sometimes masculine, sometimes child-like. Nevertheless, they are all self-portraits in that they capture a certain state of being. "They don't look like me physically, sure, but their mood is mine," Orabi says.
Sometimes the character sits cross legged on the floor, or curled up in a foetal position to sleep. Other times, they play with a yoyo, meditating, waiting for a lover, seeking to fly or to float. Their eyes are always the largest feature; almond shapes in bold black lines that pull the viewer in like a magnet. "I like that shaky sense that comes out of the repeating of broken lines; as if the image is not quite frozen on the canvas, not stable, but tense, vibrating with the possibility of movement."
Orabi's paintings do reveal a tendency towards curves, vertical lines shooting upwards, and small horizontal dashes that hint at fallen shadows. "Two arcs cross each other in two places and suddenly you have an eye," he says. "It's like poetry. Poetry is not just about sentimentality, it is also words, grammar, metaphor, sound, hyperbole, rhythm. It is everything."