Blossom of a young artist Khaled Al-Najjad is one of the most talented young painters in Syria. Born in 1992 from a Syrian father and Cuban mother, this quiet young artist lives in Swieda where he just had his first commercial exhibition at the Alfa Art Gallery. Click To Review Al-Najjad Gallery

The exhibition opened 1st April 2010 originally to run for two weeks, but the high quality of the drawings and paintings exhibited soon attracted large numbers of local visitors and the gallery had to extend the length of the exhibition for an extra week in response to popular demand. Among the visitors to the exhibition there were also renowned painters and artists from Damascus and other parts of Syria, interested in meeting with this very young talented artist and expressed their admiration for the quality of the works exhibited.

Khaled Al- Najjad can only be described as a genius of drawing. He is self-taught and yet the quality of his drawings and the composition and realism of his paintings excited open admiration from visitors.  He has a strong inclination to represent the human figure with canning realism and great understanding of the perspective. Also, and despite his youth, Khaled Al Najjid likes to transmit his vision of life through powerful messages in his drawings and paintings. This coupled with his present phase of representing reality as if viewed by a photo camera, makes his work easy to interpret by the members of the public, even those not used to see or admire art.

The MusicSyria team visited the exhibition and had the opportunity to interview Al-Najjad and ask him a few questions:

- How old were you when started painting in a considerable way?
I was 3 years old, when people noticed my talent for drawing. I had my first exhibition when I was 12 years old at elementary school.
-You paint yourself giving your figure tougher features than you have, while in reality you look a simple human being with innocent face. Are you aware of it? And if so, why?
I suppose that I portray myself the way I like my appearance to be. Although I look simple outside, there are complex paths and plenty of ambiguity inside me, which inevitably appear in my paintings.
- What do you think of artists who tend to centre their work in showing a distorted, tormented reality in their paintings?
I don know if I agree with them. Reality has the light and the dark side, but those artists you mentioned are trapped in their own nightmares that keeps them seeing only darkness and prevents them from seeing the lighter side. This is a personal attitude towards life and has a reflection in their personalities. –
- Why most of your paintings have the gray color?
Gray color in my paintings is the color of the charcoal I use, and a reflection of the doubts and contradictions that I have.
- What has early success added to your character?
This exhibition widens my horizon, I start thinking and looking around me from different angles. The resonance my exhibition has produced gives me great encouragement to pursue my carrier as an artist but also more responsibility.