Hayam Elsayed

Hope, love, and courage are the feelings of contemporary artist Hayam Elsayed narrative. The painter's approach in keeping her creative energy on the subject develops life and character in each of her unique yet universal portraits. Her inspiration comes from observing people's faces, watching the way they laugh, cry, and react to all the senses surrounding them. Studying in Florence, Elsayed became fascinated by the portraits she saw there, Leonardo's, Raffaello's works with their aesthetic, colours and artistic souls. Those artworks spoke to the sensitivity of Hayam, who beautifully connected them to her heritage, creating her own aesthetical and conceptual journey and language: “I could feel the painting, the colour, the design of the portrait itself as if I was a part of the painting. Looking back at that time I can see how my life and my whole perspective towards art had changed," she explains.

Egyptian-born Hayam Elsayed's first artistic medium was drawing in pencil but transformed her work when she moved onto paints, noting, “When I held the brush, I felt a different motion go threw my hand while I was painting my first painting." Through her strident use of colour and finding the emotions hidden within her subjects, Hayam focuses on women of all races and colours Asian, Arab, Caucasian, African – and there's something deeply engaging about every muse, with her main aim being to reveal the intensity of emotions through the gaze of the eyes. Watching people laugh, cry and react is what inspires all her work.

She breathes life into her paintings through detailed drawing techniques and colour choices that highlight the subjects' intense gazes. Her striking works focus on the rights and treatment of women and hopes her paintings will heal and help people.