PALESTINE 1949-JORDAN 2010 A Palestinian artist who lived and worked in Amman, Jordan. Al Sharif’s work is influenced strongly by the style of Surrealism and his paintings frequently include symbols pertaining to Palestine. The majority of Al Sharif’s paintings are untitled because in the artist’s opinion, if his paintings are not perceived as visual messages, then they have failed to become paintings. Furthermore, Al Sharif also actively designed posters promoting the Palestinian cause for political organizations such as FATAH (The Palestinian National Liberation Movement), the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Filistin Al Thowra (Revolutionary Palestine Magazine). With regards to his posters, Al Sharif refuses to shy away from inserting graphic imagery in order to bring his message across.

“My painting holds colors of abstract expressionism in harmony with academic figurative and brute architectural lines adjacent to fervent brush strokes. I create this antagonism within one area with studied constructivism in creating spaces. I am concerned with creating an contemporary fine arts painting that is exclusively my  own. For that reason, its existence in the eyes of the viewer becomes a reflection of the outside world that surrounds us with its tough reality; with its industrial developments and economic crises, politics, wars, and pollution that drowns us in a state of unbalance and depression, and affects the public at large in their search for the bare necessities of sustaining life.”