Islamic Art Meets British Flowers

Hadil Tamim and Adrian Lawson This provides a delightfully different perspective on flower painting. Of Palestinian heritage and born in a Syrian refugee camp, Hadil Tamim has lived in Reading for the last two decades. If you wanted a background that mirrors the symbiosis of her art, she has it. In the resulting paintings, it is honestly hard to tell where one tradition ends and the other begins, so perfect is the way they intermingle.

This is not an instructional book as such, but Hadil includes plenty of information that shows you how her images are built up, including a concise but thorough description of her working methods and plenty of sketchbook pages that show patterns being built up. Particularly intriguing is the way she uses British architectural shapes to create Islamic cartouches. Adrian Lawson provides a botanical commentary that is a further celebration of the countryside and adds to the charm of the book.

Two Rivers Press £15.99, 56 pages (P/B) ISBN 9781909747609