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Photos: An Egyptian master’s handcrafted colours capture rustic life
From a butcher’s son in the village of Zawyat Sultan, painting on packaging scraps from his father’s shop to being held among Egypt’s most highly regarded artists and garnering international acclaim, Hassan el-Shark has maintained one key element that distinguishes his scenes of rustic Egyptian life form others –el-Shark has from the very beginning handcrafted his own paints from pigments found around him. The self-taught artist paints village life from the mud, grass, spices and stones he finds around him, living in and continually inspired by the village of his birth.
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Egyptian artist Hassan el-Shark paints a piece of art with his own handcrafted colours near the ‘City of the Dead’ in Minya Governorate, Upper Egypt. El-Shark’s paintings of village life, created from the mud, grass and leaves he finds around him, are treasured in Egypt for keeping a traditional skill alive. (Mohamed Abd El Ghany / REUTERS)
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A painting by Hassan el-Shark, depicts local animals and residents presented at a gallery in Minya Governorate. Scenes from the everyday life of rural Egypt feature heavily in the work of the self taught el-Shark. (Mohamed Abd El Ghany / REUTERS)
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Hassan el-Shark looks into the distance after drawing a piece. Born in the village of Zawyat Sultan in 1949, the eldest son of the village butcher, Hassan el-Shark chose a vocation in art, crafting his tools from palm fibre for brushes, wrapping paper from his father’s shop as canvas and making his own paints from spices, rocks and flowers. (Mohamed Abd El Ghany / REUTERS)
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A painting shows a man playing a flute. The Khamsa palm, unibrowed or large moustachioed men, animals that may be found running free at any village farm or the Pyramids –these are other traditionally Egyptian icons continually feature in el-Shark’s art. (Mohamed Abd El Ghany / REUTERS)
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El-Shark dips his brush into handcrafted colour. “The making of colours is a very simple process. I did not come up with it myself. I took it from the creator’s world, from nature, a little from the mountains and the greenery, and then I made the material that fixes the colours,” he said. (Mohamed Abd El Ghany / REUTERS)
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Artist Hassan el-Shark paints near the City of the Dead. Painstakingly crafting his own colours, he applies them with tiny brushes to his intricate outlines of people and forms. “It is what makes a painting last for thousands of years,” he said of his paint. (Mohamed Abd El Ghany / REUTERS)
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Hassan el-Shark holds his piece of art at his gallery in Minya Governorate. Mohamed el-Gebaly, director of Cairo’s Kortoba Art Gallery, said el-Shark is generally regarded as one of the most important artists in Egypt. “He not only expresses the beauty of Egypt and the East, but he also represents a condition that we miss,” he said. (Mohamed Abd El Ghany / REUTERS)
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