Sannib | Pop Artist
Sannib is a distinctive contemporary iconic portrait artists working today. Renowned for his striking, mixed media portraits of 20th century icons, Sannib fuses a background in graphic design and advertising with fine art painting to produce layered, avant-garde artworks unlike anything else on the contemporary art market.
Who Is Sannib?
Sannib, born Hazem Sannib in Kuwait to a Syrian father and Lebanese mother, is a British contemporary artist now based in London. He began painting at just ten years old with no formal training, teaching himself before eventually pursuing proper instruction. Between 1997 and 1998 he took his first lessons in figurative and abstract painting under the Syrian painter Farid Georges, a graduate of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma, and showed early promise quickly, exhibiting for the first time in Kuwait in 1994 and later with the Syrian Artist Group Exhibition in Homs, Syria, in 1998.
In 1997, Sannib also graduated in Graphic Design from the distinguished Syrian Design Centre in Aleppo. Rather than moving straight into fine art, he spent the following eighteen years building a successful career in advertising, working across creative agencies in Kuwait, the UAE and London, and eventually founding his own advertising company, Kavli Advertising, alongside what would become his art practice, Sannib Arts. That commercial design background is not incidental to his art; it shapes almost everything about how he builds a composition, from his instinct for bold visual impact to the layered, graphic quality of his finished pieces. Few fine artists working today can point to nearly two decades of professional design and branding experience sitting directly behind their painting practice, and it's this unusual combination that collectors and critics repeatedly single out as the source of his distinctive visual language.
A Painter Shaped by Graphic Design and Advertising
Sannib's transition from advertising into fine art didn't erase his design instincts, it sharpened them. Where many painters approach a canvas as a purely painterly problem, Sannib approaches his with the eye of a graphic designer: thinking in terms of composition, contrast, and immediate visual impact, then layering in the texture, depth and painterly technique that fine art demands. This is what gives his work its mixed media portrait artist signature, a fusion of graphic elements, painting techniques and physical texture that feels distinct from more conventional portraiture.
His technical development continued well beyond his advertising years. Between 2001 and 2002 he lived in London, taking further painting lessons and refining his technique. In 2006 he began experimenting seriously with abstract themes and acrylic painting under the guidance of Mard Issa, a Norwegian classical painter and author whose influence pushed Sannib further from strict representation and toward the abstracted, layered style now most associated with his name.
Iconic Portraiture: Celebrating the 20th Century
Sannib's most widely recognised body of work is his portraiture, a series of contemporary celebrity portraits paying tribute to some of the most recognisable cultural figures of the 20th century. Rather than producing straightforward likenesses, Sannib abstracts the classical portrait, building an illusion of layers that gives each piece a genuine sense of physical depth. Familiar faces become something closer to relics or icons, rendered with an innovative, almost reverent charm that manages to feel both nostalgic and thoroughly modern at once.
The Story Behind 'Hidden Side'
Central to Sannib's portrait work is a concept he calls the story Hidden Side, and it's arguably the single most distinctive idea in his entire practice. In these half face portrait paintings, only one side of a subject's face is fully revealed; the other is obscured, whether by a sweep of paint, a wisp of suggested smoke, or a closed eye. The visible half represents the version of the person the public already knows, their public persona, their legend. The hidden half stands in for everything unseen: the private life, the undisclosed history, the parts of a person's story that never made it into the public record.
Sannib has described this as a reflection of something universal, the idea that every person carries a contrasting, hidden side to their personality regardless of how famous or well-documented their public life might be. Applied to the legendary and beloved cultural figures he paints, the concept adds genuine emotional weight to what might otherwise be straightforward celebrity portraiture, turning each piece into a meditation on fame, privacy, and the gap between the person and the persona.
Dreamalism and Sacred Themes
Beyond his celebrity portraiture, Sannib is also known as the originator of Dreamalism, a contemporary art concept and movement of his own creation, expressed through oil and acrylic paintings that move well beyond conventional portrait work. Under this strand of his practice, Sannib has produced pieces exploring sacred and devotional subject matter, including work centred on the names of God, the door of the Kaaba, and golden depictions of Mecca, blending digital art techniques with both Arabic and Western artistic traditions. This side of his output reveals an artist working across a genuinely broad creative range, moving fluidly between pop-culture portraiture and deeply personal, spiritually rooted work.
Colour, Texture and Technique
Across every strand of his practice, Sannib's work is unified by a highly distinctive colour palette and an unmistakable commitment to texture. He describes finding his colours in nature's own spectrum, drawn particularly to the golden tones found in earth and soil and the rich blues that run through both sea and sky. These colours are applied not as flat blocks but as part of a genuinely mixed media process, combining multiple materials and mediums with avant-garde finishes that give each surface real physical presence. Layers of paint sit alongside graphic elements and textural passages, so that a Sannib piece rewards close inspection as much as it does from a distance, the surface itself becoming part of the story being told.
Exhibitions and Collectors
Sannib has exhibited across multiple countries, including Kuwait, Syria and England, building an international following for both his portrait work and his more devotional pieces. His journey from a self-taught ten-year-old with no formal training to an artist showing internationally is itself part of what draws collectors to his story; there's a sense with Sannib's work that every technical skill on display, the layering, the graphic precision, the confident handling of colour, was earned through decades of hands-on practice across two demanding creative disciplines rather than inherited from a single art school education.
His work is now held by galleries and private collectors across the UK, with original paintings and signed limited edition prints both in strong demand. Collectors are drawn not only to the technical sophistication of individual pieces but to the coherence of his broader body of work; whether a viewer encounters one of his half face celebrity portraits or a piece from his Dreamalism series, the same distinctive palette, texture, and layered graphic sensibility runs through all of it, making a Sannib piece instantly identifiable regardless of subject matter. OH Gallery's Market Harborough space is now among the venues where Midlands-based collectors can view and acquire his work directly, without needing to travel to London or seek out his international representation.
Why OH Gallery Is Showing Sannib
As an independent art gallery in Market Harborough, OH Gallery is drawn to artists whose work is genuinely difficult to categorise, and few contemporary painters resist easy categorisation quite like Sannib. For collectors in Leicestershire and the wider Midlands, this is a chance to see, in person, the striking combination of graphic design precision and painterly texture that has made his portraiture instantly recognisable on the UK contemporary art scene.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where can I buy original Sannib artwork near Market Harborough?
Original paintings and signed limited edition prints by Sannib are available to view and purchase at OH Gallery in Market Harborough, alongside his existing gallery representation across the UK.
What is the "hidden Side" in Sannib's portraits?
It's a recurring concept in his portraiture where only one side of a subject's face is revealed, symbolising the public persona, while the obscured half represents hidden or undisclosed parts of their life story.
What medium does Sannib work in?
Sannib works in mixed media, combining graphic elements, oil and acrylic paint, and layered textures, alongside a separate body of digital art produced under his Dreamalism concept.
Where did Sannib train?
He graduated in Graphic Design from the Syrian Design Centre in Aleppo in 1997, and took painting lessons under Farid Georges and later Mard Issa, alongside eighteen years of professional experience in advertising.
View or Enquire About Sannib's Work
Browse available Sannib paintings and prints at Ourhouse Gallery or contact OH Gallery, Market Harborough, to enquire about a piece.
