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About Me

Hello, I’m Ikleel, a portraiture painter from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, currently living and working between London and Jeddah. Art has always been at the center of my life. Ever since I was a child, I was fascinated by art. What started as a childhood pastime, sketching faces and observing the world around me, slowly evolved into a lifelong calling.

In 2015, I committed myself fully to oil painting, drawn by its richness, history, and expressive potential. I was particularly inspired by the techniques of the old masters, painters like John Singer Sargent, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, and Rembrandt, whose ability to capture life, texture, and emotion felt timeless. Without formal instruction in the beginning, I taught myself through study, practice, and an obsessive attention to detail. Over time, this led me to develop a personal style best described as impressionistic realism: a merging of precise observation and expressive, emotive brushwork.

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The Cultural Thread in My Work

Growing up in Jeddah, surrounded by stories of my ancestors, heirloom garments, and everyday rituals passed down through the women in my family, I developed a deep appreciation for the textures, colors, and symbolism embedded in Saudi material culture. My painting practice is grounded in this, not only in its aesthetic beauty but in its role as a living archive of personal and collective memory.

Through my work, I strive to document and reinterpret these cultural narratives, focusing on the often-overlooked details: the intricate embroidery on a woman’s veil, the way light falls on traditional fabrics, or the quiet grace of a domestic ritual passed down over generations. Painting, for me, is both a creative act and a form of cultural preservation. Each canvas is a way to reclaim and protect our visual languages, especially as rapid globalization threatens to homogenize and erase many of these indigenous traditions.

 

Exhibitions and the Beginnings of a Public Practice

In 2017, I held my first solo exhibition titled Saudi Heritage Artwork. It was a pivotal moment for me, not just as an artist stepping into the public sphere, but as a woman actively participating in the visual storytelling of my culture. The exhibition featured portraits inspired by Saudi traditional attire, aiming to share the beauty, grace, and complexity of our culture with a wider audience, both locally and internationally.

Since then, my work has continued to engage with these themes, evolving in form but always rooted in a desire to visually honor and preserve the heritage that shaped me.

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Teaching and Building a Portraiture Community in Jeddah

One thing I noticed early in my career was the lack of portrait-painting courses available in Jeddah. Most art academies and programs centered around landscape or still-life painting, leaving figurative and portraiture work largely unexplored. Recognizing a need, in 2020 I launched Jeddah’s first accredited portrait oil painting course, The Introductory Portrait Oil Painting Course, followed by an advanced program, Classical Portrait Painting and then by the Impressionist Painting course.

Since then, I’ve had the honor of teaching over 410 students. What began as a modest offering quickly revealed a vibrant, untapped interest in portraiture within the Saudi art community. It confirmed what I always believed: the appetite for figurative and cultural storytelling in art has always been here, it simply needed the right space and mentorship to flourish. I’m proud to be part of nurturing a new generation of portraiture painters in Saudi Arabia.

 

London: Studying and Expanding My Practice

In 2025, I completed my Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting at University of the Arts London (UAL). This chapter allowed me to step into new conversations within the global art world while remaining anchored in my heritage. Studying in London exposed me to contemporary dialogues about art, identity, and cultural memory, further sharpening my voice as a painter committed to both tradition and innovation.

I’ve since exhibited my work in London, engaging audiences with visual narratives that explore themes of belonging, memory, and cultural resilience, offering a Saudi perspective often underrepresented in international art spaces.

 

The Impressionist Saudi Collection: A Contemporary Archive

For the past year, I’ve been working on an ongoing series titled The Impressionist Saudi Collection. This body of work is a celebration of Saudi Arabia’s rich cultural heritage and timeless beauty, seen through the emotive lens of impressionist painting. The collection is deeply personal, shaped by the colors, textures, and ancestral stories I grew up with.

Drawing inspiration from the impressionist movement, I paint with bold, expressive brushstrokes, capturing not just appearances, but the essence of fleeting moments and the spirit of a people deeply rooted in tradition. This collection pays homage to Saudi women, whom I view as the enduring custodians of beauty, memory, and tradition. Through embroidery, weaving, storytelling, poetry, and domestic rituals, these women have preserved the soul of our culture. My paintings seek to honor their artistry and resilience, positioning them not as passive subjects, but as creative forces who shape our social and cultural identity.

Thematically, the collection is about confronting the quiet erasure of indigenous heritage in a rapidly globalizing world. I want to safeguard the visual languages, customs, and histories at risk of being forgotten, while proving their enduring relevance within contemporary art dialogues. Each piece functions as both a visual archive and an act of cultural resistance, forging a connection between past and present, ancestry and modernity.

I see these works as sites of memory, reclamation, and belonging, spaces where my community’s stories can endure, evolve, and remain visible for future generations.

 

Finally

At the heart of everything I do, whether it’s painting, teaching, or researching, is a belief that art preserves memory. It records the unspoken, honors the overlooked, and transforms everyday life into enduring visual narratives. Through my paintings, I hope to offer viewers a more intimate, humanized portrait of Saudi culture: one built not just on tradition, but on lived experiences, personal histories, and the extraordinary beauty found in the everyday.

Painting, for me, is an act of devotion, a language through which I seek meaning, beauty, and connection. It is my constant pursuit of grace, an offering of love, and a lifelong attempt to transcend the ordinary through the sacred act of creating. Every brushstroke is both a remembrance and a rebellion against forgetting, a way to keep the stories of my people alive in color, light, and texture.

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Exhibitions

• 2025: Camberwell Painting Degree Show, Camberwell College of Arts, UAL, London, UK.

• 2025: Saudi Founding Day Exhibition,University of Reading, Reading, UK.

• 2025: Saudi Founding Day Exhibition,University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.

• 2025: Saudi Founding Day Exhibition, Saudi Cultural Bureau, London, UK.

• 2025: What Now Exhibition, Southwark Park Galleries, London, UK.

• 2024: Roots & Routes Exhibition, Millbank Tower, London, UK.

• 2024: Soulscapes Late Night, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, UK.

• 2024: Milk & Honey Exhibition, Brixton Tate Library, London, UK.

• 2024: Coalesce Exhibition, Copeland Gallery, London, UK.

• 2024: Live painting at Saudi Founding Day Exhibition, Saudi Cultural Bureau, London, UK.

• 2023: Before Now After Then Exhibition, Barge House Gallery, OXO Tower Wharf, London, UK.

• 2022: Camberwell Winter Gallery, Camberwell College of Arts, UAL, London, UK.

• 2022: Saudi Artists of London, Lancaster Gate, London, UK.

• 2022: Live painting at Women's Day Event, KPMG Head office, Jeddah, SA.

• 2017: Saudi Heritage Artwork-Solo Exhibition, Alasath Exhibition Space, Jeddah, SA.

• 2017: Live painting at HRH King Salman Gallery, Hilton Hotel, Jeddah, SA.

• 2016: Live painting at Mother’s Day Gallery, Hilton Hotel, Jeddah, SA.

• 2016: Live painting at Jeddah Spring Gallery, Jeddah, SA.