CAIRO - Engagement… The Eye of the storm… Meditation… At your Service… Gossip… Shake It, Shake It… Go Away… The Good, the Bad and the Ugly… These are not the names of Egyptian films but the names of some of the paintings by Ayman Taher in his exhibition, entitled ‘Of Him… and occasionally Her'. “I'm fond of human feelings. They are the most wonderful thing in the world. They can make a man a genius or kill him,” Ayman told The Egyptian Gazette in an interview. “I know man's nature better than woman's as I'm a male, but I want to stress that he is always busy with her.” Ayman, who says that fine art is based on feelings, uses colour in an eyecatching way. He uses the colour red, for example, to express contradictions like hatred and love. “Red is a suitable colour for wrath and hatred and it also relates to love, as love and hatred are two sides of the same coin.” Ayman, who graduated from the Fine Arts Faculty in 1970, worked as a textile designer and producer from then until 1984, since when he has been manager of Aqua Marine Diving Centre in Sharm el- Sheikh. He is a professional photographer, painter and artist, specialising in underwater, nature, commercial and architectural themes. He has developed and owns tourism projects including el-Fanar, Ras Um el-Sid, and the Go Dive Diving Centre in Hurghada and Sharm el-Sheikh. Ayman has also written a book entitled Sinai, published in 1995 in Italy, and The Touristic Guide to the Sinai Peninsula, published in 1992 in Greece. In addition, he has held seven solo exhibitions, three of them in Paris, Pennsylvania and California respectively, as well as many group exhibitions in Cairo, England and France. He has contributed photographs to leading magazines here and in Europe. Ayman, 64, has participated in and produced underwater documentaries, working with well-known artists and scientists in the field, like Bruno Vilati, Jack Mayol and Dr Eugene Clark. He was appointed chief director of the first Underwater National Park in Egypt at Ras Mohamed and has won several awards and prizes from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism. “I like his paintings as they contain movement. He puts a lot of effort into them,” said Georges Hathout, an architect, who attended the opening ceremony of the exhibition last Tuesday. “His ideas, composition and colours are good. His paintings are remarkable for their poise.” The artist, who is also a diving instructor, has received inspiration from his paintings from the huge library ��" around 40,000 books ��" he inherited from his late father, the prominent painter Salah Taher (1911-2007). In the 1950s and 1960s, Salah Taher held various high-profile positions, including head of the Modern Art Museum, the Artistic Affairs Office Manager for Minister of Culture and National Guidance Tharwat Okasha and Director of the Cairo Opera House. In three years, 1959-1961, he received the State Incentive Award, the Alexandria Biennale Award and the Guggenheim Award, later supplemented by many others, including the State Merit Award and the Mubarak Award. He has done about 15,000 paintings and held more than 80 art fairs for his works in Egypt, Venice, New York, San Francisco, Geneva, Beirut, Kuwait and Jeddah. He also participated in a total of 67 collective fairs in Egypt. “I was a great fan of his late father. Ayman's art can be considered to be an extension of his father's, with his use of colours, feelings, shadow and culture,” Ahmed Abdel-Wareth, an Egyptian artist, told this newspaper. “Every one of his paintings is like a book, in which the artist expresses his own point of view that reflects his culture and his sense of colour. The names he gives to his paintings also have a lot of meanings.”
