Oman art: Gailani launches book tracing his journey and life experiences

Muscat: Ibrahim Gailani, a popular artist and a resident of Oman, recently launched his book entitled, “Gailani-An Artistic Journey,” on his art experiences so far.
The book, which is divided into six sections, includes 60 of Gailani’s best paintings, which have been given suitable captions to bring out the emotion, struggle and conflicts that the artist underwent while sketching them.
Influenced by Sufism and works of the famous Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo, most of Gailani’s art pieces reflect the different moods and phases of his life.
“This book really came out of this desire to tell my story; I wanted to talk about how art transformed my life. So over the past four years, and that’s how long this book has been in the making, I pieced together my earlier works to my most recent ones and each would narrate an aspect of my journey and my life.”
Element of mystery
“So this is really something for readers to discover, it’s something which unfolds, it’s not a straight piece, there is an element of mystery that you continue to decipher as you go on.”
“The first part in the book is the stories, the paintings, the influences and the next part is about the work that I have done in the retreat for others through art and healing. After that it’s about the events I have curated and organised and finally the newspaper articles and success stories.”
According to Gailani, Oman has helped him become an artist and allowed him to reach heights that he could not have imagined four years ago, and that’s why this book was launched in Oman.
“When I started four years ago, Gailani art was virtually unknown and what I wanted to show was that with consistent hard work, you can really achieve anything.
“I wanted to show it to students, who are maybe struggling or other artists, who want to know how one makes it, and from somebody, who has had relatively good success; this is a sort of illustration about where focus, determination and hard work can take you.”