Sleeping Boy 1972

Louay Kayyali created this melancholic painting of a sleeping boy, in muted blues and browns, with his face obscured by his hands. I wonder how this image came into being? Maybe through careful studies, building up layers of paint, and slowly revealing the figure. The painting is melancholic, even though the subject is sleeping. The boy curls in on himself, as if to hide himself from the world. I can imagine Kayyali, feeling a deep empathy for his subject, thinking about the weight of the world on young shoulders. The paint is applied in thin washes, creating a sense of fragility and vulnerability. Notice the textural ground, almost like an old fresco, scratched, and worn away which gives it a ghostly quality. The image makes me think about the work of other painters, like Paula Rego or Käthe Kollwitz, who were also drawn to depicting the suffering and vulnerability of ordinary people. Painting is a form of embodied expression, where artists respond to each other across time, inspiring one another. It embraces ambiguity, allowing for multiple interpretations and meanings to emerge.