Up in the air, travelling between different cultural mentalities with attendant social codes, Essam Marouf (Cairo, Egypt, 1958) found a mental asylum. Recurrent motives in his work are based on family ties, luxury goods and ideals of beauty. In his paintings and drawings he researches into his personal relationship to the seduction of lifestyle magazines' and advertisements' idealized worlds. His methods of creation consist of searching, building and destroying.

He uses acrylic paint, regularly rinsing the surface. This way the freshly painted image is washed away again. This approach leads to layered results and associations with landscapes. The process is repeated until the painting assumes definite form and destroying the image becomes more and more difficult. The undermost layer often is a formal one, consisting of line structures, dots and styled symbols in dark tones, combined into ritmical patterns. The painting presents itself as a mirror, but behind the mirror a window appears, offering unexpected perpectives. The representation does not serve any central theme. Essam Marouf prefers "the perspective of the soul", over and above the Western "perspective of the eye". He does not care about figurative depiction and takes aesthetic form to be subordinate to spiritual content. With few exceptions his paintings depict human beings, one or more persons in full at times, or a single portrait only at other times. Faces are painted away, or just vague facial outlines are all that's left. Intriguing, often static figures are situated in well-nigh monochrome backgrounds. This way they look like appearing from nothing. Rhytmic symbols disturb the plane at times. According to Marouf such symbols are universal forms often to be found in both Western and Eastern architecture. Impression has it that forms in his paintings were not created by brush strokes but by stenciling or stamping. Oftentimes the same forms are repeated over and again. Multilayered paint, both transparent and covering create complex canvases. Still they render the impression of peace, quiet and simplicity.

Essam Marouf studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Caïro, 1976-1981. Next he went for education in painting, at the Academy of Arts, Rome, till 1985. After this he settled as an artist in Amsterdam. Answering the question what inspires him, Marouf says that his paintings are "remembrances" and "snapshots from memory". Somewhere he saw or read something. Images and atmospheres get hold of him. This way his paintings come into being. Elucidation of his work is limited to technicalities of painting, at the same time emphasizing abstract and poetical elements. Planes form the background, still more strongly isolating forms and patterns are in the foreground. Development of more subtle color transitions led to disappearance of a strong-handed painter's gesture. More balanced uses of color and visible brush-strokes return, more consciously and more effectively put to effect than earlier on.