“My upbringing in Makkah influenced not only my work but also who I am. The spirituality of that environment is what made me want to be an artist. I wanted to respond to that atmosphere.”
Yousef Jaha was born in Makkah in 1953, where he has spent most of his life. He has a BA in Art Education from Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, 1983. As well as being a practicing artist whose work is in private and public collections in Saudi Arabia and other parts of the world, he has dedicated the last 31 years of his life to teaching art to primary school children.
He encourages the overlap of both roles: as artist and teacher. One of his greatest influences is childlike curiosity and lack of pretension. Their innocence and spontaneous character is clearly reflected in the expressive and loose form of his work.
Inspired both by the spirituality of Makkah and the beauty of its surrounding landscape, his works Natures Body I, II and III suggest expressionistic dreamscapes typical of Jaha’s late period and rooted in his experience of Makkah.
