Written by Nathalie Bsat

Jehad Al Ameri is a Jordanian artist born in the valley of Jordan in 1977. He was first exposed to graphic arts in grade school, and his creative sensibilities led him to pursue an education in the arts. After completing his undergraduate education in fine arts at Baghdad University in 2002, he returned to Jordan to earn an MFA from Al Yarmouk University in 2010. He later obtained a doctorate in fine arts at the University of Granada in Spain, where he is currently based part-time. When he is not in Granada, Al Ameri lives and works in Amman, and is a current member of the Jordanian Plastic Arts Association.

Al Ameri works on the relationship between poetry and the visual arts. 

As a child growing up in a small agricultural community, he watched farmers singing poetry-like songs while working in the fields, which prompted him to associate poetry with the visual beauty of the landscape. The combination of auditory and visual sensations sewn together with language led to his subsequent belief in the twinned nature of poetry and plastic arts­– a belief that continues to inflect his art to this day. 

History has been another primary inspiration for Al Ameri, who is fascinated by the traces left behind by previous civilizations and the way these traces manifest in the culture of everyday life. The artist finds evidence of this phenomenon wherever he lives, be it Iraq, Jordan or Spain.

The latter, however, is arguably the place that has marked his artistic practice most. Captivated by the medieval palaces of Alhambra, Al Ameri was struck by the abundance of material evidence cataloging the presence of the Arabs in Granada, a civilization whose rich heritage continues to influence the region’s culture today. He took note of the aesthetics employed by the Arabs at the time of their presence in Granada, including the emphasis on architectural symmetry, harmonious balance of geometric shapes, and use of water features like fountains and ponds as reflective surfaces that amplified the effects of light and color. Al Ameri was also inspired to investigate the details on Andalusian women’s faces and paint them.

Al Ameri’s semi-abstract paintings combine these visual elements (and others culled from his life and travels) with the rhythms, melodies, and visual markers of poetry and language. The Arabic letter and forms derived from it is discernible in much of his work, which makes use of bold graphic elements in combination with more subtle gradations of color to create compositions that are at once busy and soothing to the eye. Many of his paintings incorporate the work of classical Arabic poets, such as Ibn Khafajah of al-Andalus (c. 1058-1138).

Today, Al Ameri lives and works between Spain and Jordan, and is a faculty member in the Visual Arts Department at the University of Jordan.

Sources

Patricia. "Jehad Al Ameri : un peintre poète." Qatar Actu. December 01, 2013. Accessed September 05, 2017. http://qataractu.com/jehad-al-ameri-un-peintre-poete-96.html.

"Meet the Artists." Jehad Al-Ameri - Anima. Accessed September 05, 2017. http://www.cdc-qatar.com/jehad-al-ameri.

"Jehad Al Ameri." AlHoush House of Arab Art and Design. Accessed September 05, 2017. http://alhoush.com/jehad-al-ameri.

"جهاد العامري: عشائرية النقد تؤخر ا شهد التشكيلي ا ردني." Al-Quds Arabi, October 01, 2014. Accessed September 05, 2017. http://www.alquds.co.uk/?p=228761.