The 5th in the series Arabic Design Library by Khatt Books Kameel Hawa is a Lebanese graphic designer, writer, and artist. He is the founder of one of the first Arab transnational design studio, Al Mohtaraf. His formal training as a designer originated in working at some of Beirut’s progressive journals of the 1970s, befriending renowned printers, editors, writers, artists, and intellectuals of his generation....
Few years ago, I had written the short introduction to my small book ‘flowers in vases’, and in it I try to explain how come I only paint flowers in vases, and never in nature. The explanation I gave ( included below) pleased many, and I surely still hold to it. Only now I feel I wish so add a more realistic and sort of tangible reason: the vase without flowers is empty and sad, and the flowers without the vase are scattered with form. The vase gives the bouquet of flowers a perfect base out of which they can flow out and up in a beautifully composed chaos! And different flower arrangements make such a variety of compositions. To conclude I once wrote those few lines of verse on the same: ...