ABOUT FAYEZ BARAKAT
Fayez Barakat is best known as one of the world’s most important dealers and collectors of ancient art. His gallery in London is a treasure trove, filled to the brim with every age and culture ranging from Maya crystal skulls to Mogul statuary and Egyptian jewellery. However, whilst Barakat’s extensive knowledge has helped shape key private and public collections, another side to him that is fast becoming apparent:he is a prolific and highly accomplished painter who has managed over the last few years to establish an eclectic and allusive body of work. Employing an astonishingly wide range of techniques, Fayez Barakat paints like other artists sketch; that is, he paints restlessly, loosely, energetically and gives over free rein to the flow of ideas going through him. The paintings, partly triggered by visions and ideas the arts has (he calls them “concerts of ideas, colours and themes”), are mostly executed at night between 2am and 5am or in any other free time he has from running and managing his galleries across three separate time zones. Other ideas come from the environment in which he paints, ranging as they do from his studios in Jordan, Los
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