Gommaar Gilliams Belgian, b. 1982
"In my work, which is an oscillation between abstraction and representation, I try to create seemingly timeless scenarios that appear at once familiar and fantastical, scenes that appear like half-remembered or imagined memories filled with a sense of nostalgia and longing."
- Gommaar Gilliams
Gommaar Gilliams is a Belgian painter born in 1982. Graduating in visual arts from LUCA School of Arts in Brussels and having a Master's degree in Painting from PXL College in Hasselt, his large-scale paintings and textural wall hangings fuse American Abstract Expressionism with figurative elements derived from Middle Eastern to European symbolism.
Gilliams' relationship to art history is highly personal. His work is bursting with duality, both in terms of its contents and its techniques. The great power of this lies in his knack for bringing contrasting elements together in a natural way. This is only possible through an understanding of both the light and the dark. With the painterly prowess of Georg Baselitz or Cy Twombly, he creates works whose gentle magic is reminiscent of the paintings of Paul Klee and whose naturalism and imagination call to mind the work of the symbolist.
Gommaar Gilliams is a Belgian painter born in 1982. Graduating in visual arts from LUCA School of Arts in Brussels and having a Master's degree in Painting from PXL College in Hasselt, his large-scale paintings and textural wall hangings fuse American Abstract Expressionism with figurative elements derived from Middle Eastern to European symbolism.
Gilliams has exhibited widely across Europe as well as in solo exhibitions at De Buck Gallery in New York and The Cabin LA residency in Los Angeles. His work has also won numerous national awards in Belgium including the Ernest Albert Grand Prize (Grote Prijs Ernest Albert) in Mechelen and the Prize of the City of Harelbeke (Prijs van de stad Harelbeke). He lives and works in Hasselt, Belgium.
