Emotional Strokes

The Emotional Strokes Project is a collection of abstract paintings, resulting from a research-based work conducted during the first months of the Covid pandemic. Mahmoud Mostafa used the basic expressive tools of the calligraphy artist (namely ink, paper and pen) to explore and capture the different psychological and sensory states he passed through during the period of isolation.

The Emotional Strokes Project is an attempt to demonstrate how the strokes made by the calligrapher may be not simply a craft but can convey as well emotions and ideas in a very powerful and artistic way. The direct connection between the soul, the hand and the qalam is here thought as a privileged channel of expression for the inner self of the artist.

Colors, shades and pen movements spontaneously express the emotional balance or turbulence of the artist at the moment of writing. Some of the artworks are constructed based on a stratification work, the many layers expressing the deepness and the complexity of the human soul.