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Egyptian painter's hand-crafted colors keep tradition alive

  (Reuters)
Cairo, Egypt
Thu, January 17, 2019

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Egyptian painter's hand-crafted colors keep tradition alive Artist, Hassan el-Shark, paints a piece of art with his own handcrafted colors near the 'City of the Dead' in Minya Governorate, Upper Egypt on January 8, 2019. (REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany)

E

gyptian artist Hassan 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.

He painstakingly crafts his own colors, applying them with tiny brushes to his intricate outlines of people and forms, which have found international acclaim.

"The making of colors 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 colors," he said.

"It is what makes a painting last for thousands of years."

Read also: Indonesian cave paintings are world's earliest figurative art

Mohamed el-Gebaly, director of Cairo's Kortoba Art Gallery, said 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.

"He is reviving heritage. He is reviving things that we might have lost over the years."

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