A quiet passage into the rainforest, where water, light and dense tropical growth create a world of their own.

Where the Rainforest Calls grew from my connection to the tropical landscape of Far North Queensland. Framed by an arch-like structure, the view opens toward water, palms and dense vegetation, drawing the eye from the darker foreground into the light beyond.

Layers of texture and colour create the feeling of entering rather than simply observing the landscape. The architecture becomes a threshold between the viewer and the rainforest — a recurring element in my work, where windows, arches and pathways often suggest movement from one place or state into another.

A small bird appears within the vegetation, adding another quiet connection to the wildlife of the region.

Some landscapes do not simply surround us — they draw us in.

Medium: Mixed media on canvas
Dimensions: 40 × 50 cm
Year: 2026
Framed: Framed and ready to hang

Two ancient landscapes meet across distance, memory and belonging.

Where the Ancient Lands Meet brings together two places that carry deep histories — Jordan and Australia — within one imagined landscape. Uluru appears beyond an architectural arch, creating a visual meeting point between the ancient lands of my heritage and the country that became my home.

The arch acts as a threshold rather than simply a frame. Through it, one landscape opens onto another, allowing places separated by geography and culture to coexist within the same space.

Layers of texture, softened colour and light blur the boundary between memory and present experience. The work reflects a recurring idea within my Between Two Homelands series: belonging does not always require choosing one place over another. Both can become part of how we understand home.

We carry the landscapes that shaped us, even as we learn to belong somewhere new.

Medium: Mixed media on canvas
Dimensions: 60 × 60 cm
Year: 2026
Framed: Framed and ready to hang

A living archive of Cairns, where history is carried through the roots of the landscape.

What the Roots Remember explores Cairns through layers of memory, place and change. A monumental tree anchors the composition, its trunk and spreading roots holding fragments of the city’s past while contemporary Cairns emerges beyond.

Historical references are woven into the tree rather than presented as a timeline. Early ships appear through the cooler atmosphere to the left, while architecture, the railway and fragments of Cairns’ sugar-cane history emerge from within the trunk and roots. Some are immediately visible; others reveal themselves only through closer looking.

Around them, the landscape shifts into the present, mountains, water and the contemporary city, while the tree connects these different moments as one continuing story.

The work reflects the idea that a place does not simply leave its past behind. What came before remains beneath the surface, shaping what grows from it.

The landscape changes, but the roots remember.

Medium: Mixed media – acrylic and oil on canvas
Dimensions: 61 × 91 cm
Year: 2026
Framed: Unframed

A threshold between uncertainty and possibility, where light becomes the way forward.

Threshold explores the moment of crossing from one state into another. Warm earth tones move around a luminous opening, while the small passage of light draws the eye inward and creates a sense of movement through the composition.

Rather than revealing what lies beyond, the work holds the viewer at the point of transition — that quiet space between what is known and what has yet to emerge.

Sometimes the next path begins simply by stepping toward the light.

Medium: Acrylic and oil on canvas
Dimensions: 90 × 90 cm
Year: 2025
Framed: Unframed

Some burdens can be seen. Others are carried quietly.

The Weight She Carries centres on a young girl walking barefoot through a landscape fractured by destruction, carrying containers of water in her hands.

Her figure emerged from layers of paint, collage, texture and fragmented marks. Around her, blue-greys, ochres and traces of buildings suggest a landscape altered by conflict, while the question-mark-like form rising behind her quietly asks what remains unanswered.

The water she carries has a physical weight, but the painting considers another kind of weight, what a child may be forced to carry when ordinary childhood is interrupted.

Her bare feet became an important detail as the work developed. Against the rubble and broken landscape, they speak quietly of vulnerability, endurance and the simple act of continuing forward.

The Weight She Carries is part of an emerging body of work reflecting on children whose childhood has been interrupted by circumstances they did not create.

Medium: Mixed media with collage, acrylic and oil on canvas
Dimensions: 60 × 60 cm
Year: 2026
Framed:‍ ‍Unframed

A quiet presence emerges through layers of blue and gold, carrying a sense of protection, strength and watchfulness.

The Silent Guardian explores the idea of guardianship through an expressive, almost mythical figure that emerges from rather than sits upon the painted surface. Rich blues create depth and atmosphere, while gold and calligraphic details bring warmth, movement and a sense of the sacred.

The figure is intentionally not fully defined. Part animal, part symbol and part imagined presence, it invites the viewer to form their own relationship with what — or whom — the guardian may represent.

Layered colour, texture and mark-making give the work a contemporary expression while drawing on the visual language of memory and symbolism.

Some forms of protection are felt rather than seen.

Medium: Mixed media on canvas
Dimensions: 40 × 30 cm
Year: 2026
Framed: Framed and ready to hang

A passage shaped by memory, where the landscape seems to hold the traces of those who came before.

The Land Remembers the Way explores memory and place through a landscape that feels both physical and remembered. Layered earth tones, softened forms and a luminous central passage create the sense of moving through terrain shaped by time.

Rather than describing a particular destination, the work considers the way landscapes can carry traces of movement, history and belonging. The opening between the landforms becomes both a pathway and a threshold, a place where memory seems to guide the way forward.

The layered surface allows forms to emerge and recede, echoing the way places remain with us long after we have left them.

Sometimes the landscape remembers the way before we do.

Medium: Mixed media on canvas
Dimensions: 76 × 40 cm
Year: 2026
Framed: Unframed

Some images remain with us long after we have looked away.

The Cry That Remained began with a photograph of a young girl crying in a war zone, an image that stayed with me and demanded a response.

Created through torn newspaper, fragments of words, acrylic and oil paint, paste, alcohol effects, texture and expressive marks, the work was not carefully planned. I allowed the layers to build intuitively until the child’s face became the quiet centre amongst all the movement.

She is surrounded by fractured headlines, turbulent colour and traces of human stories. Within the layered surface, the quieter image of a mother holding her baby can also be discovered, a subtle presence of tenderness and protection amid the unrest.

I was not trying to reproduce the photograph perfectly. The painting became my response to seeing a child caught in circumstances no child should have to understand.

The Cry That Remained holds the feeling left behind when an image touches us so deeply that we need somewhere to place what we cannot express in words.

Read the Studio Diary: When an Image Wouldn’t Leave Me

Medium: Mixed media collage with paper, acrylic and oil on canvas
Dimensions: 30 × 40 cm
Year: 2026
Framed: Framed and Ready to hang

A tropical storm gathers over Cairns, where dramatic skies meet the stillness of water and land.

Storm Over Cairns captures the shifting atmosphere of Far North Queensland as a storm moves across the landscape. Deep blues, violets and charcoal tones build through the sky, while warmer light breaks through the cloud and reflects against the darker land and water below.

Layered colour and atmospheric transitions evoke that familiar tropical tension, the charged stillness before the weather changes.

In Cairns, even the storm becomes part of the landscape.

Medium: Acrylic and oil on canvas
Dimensions: 76 × 40 cm
Year: 2025
Framed: Unframed

Some things are witnessed even when they are never spoken.

Silenced Witness explores observation, memory and the traces that remain when experiences cannot easily be expressed. Fragmented forms emerge and disappear through layers of blue, turquoise, rose and muted earth tones, creating a surface that feels both exposed and concealed.

An eye appears within the layers while a dark bird-like form moves across the composition, suggesting the presence of a witness — watching, carrying and remembering without speaking.

Rather than offering a single narrative, the painting leaves fragments for the viewer to discover, reflecting the way memory itself can surface in incomplete images, marks and impressions.

What remains may fade, but it lives on through time.

Medium: Mixed media on canvas
Dimensions: 50 × 60 cm
Year: 2025
Unframed

What has been discarded can return with a different purpose.

Second Chance explores renewal through materials that have already lived another life. Recycled Nespresso coffee capsules, dried leaves, flowers and natural elements are embedded into the painted surface, transforming everyday discarded materials into part of a Cairns landscape.

At its centre, the cassowary anchors the work firmly in Far North Queensland, while layered vegetation, water and textured forms bring together the natural environment and the objects we leave behind.

The work reflects on resilience, reuse and transformation, not by hiding the history of its materials, but by allowing that history to become part of the artwork.

What has been discarded can return with a different purpose.

Exhibited: Rejuve-Art Exhibition, Cairns Art Society Gallery, September–October 2026

Medium: Mixed media on canvas, incorporating recycled Nespresso coffee capsules and natural materials
Dimensions: 50 × 70 cm
Year: 2026
Framed: Unframed

Belonging does not always mean choosing one place. Sometimes we grow roots in both.

Rooted Between Two Homelands explores what happens when two places have both become part of who you are. A gum tree anchors the composition, its spreading roots carrying fragments of Jordanian history and memory while the surrounding landscape evokes Australia.

The roots hold more than one meaning — ancestral roots in Jordan, putting down roots in Australia, and the possibility of belonging to a new homeland without uprooting the old one.

Rather than portraying migration as a journey from one place to another, the work reflects a life shaped by both: memory and belonging existing together, each continuing to grow.

Sometimes belonging is not about choosing between two homelands, but becoming rooted in both.

Medium: Acrylic and oil with mixed-media texture on canvas
Dimensions: 61 × 91 cm
Year: 2026
Framed: Unframed

A quiet reflection on landscape, memory and the traces left behind.

Inspired by the ancient desert landscapes of Wadi Rum, Reflection explores a quiet moment of observation across shifting layers of colour, movement and geological form.

Soft passages of blue, ochre and rust move through the composition like weathered strata, while the layered surface suggests a landscape shaped gradually by time rather than a single captured view.

The work is less about depicting a particular place than holding onto the feeling of it — its stillness, distance and enduring presence.

Some landscapes remain with us long after we have left them.

Medium: Acrylic and oil on canvas
Dimensions: 30.5 × 40.6 cm
Year: 2026
Framed: Yes

Inspired by Jordan’s Black Iris, this work evolved through the painting process into something less literal and more expressive.

Purple Iris began with the Black Iris, Jordan’s national flower, as its point of departure. As layers of colour and movement developed, the near-black petals shifted toward deep violet and purple, allowing the flower to take on a character of its own.

Against warmer ochre and golden tones, the iris emerges through expressive marks and layered colour rather than botanical precision. For me, its connection to Jordan remains beneath the surface — a familiar symbol of place transformed through memory, distance and the act of painting.

Part of the Resilience in Bloom collection, the work reflects how something rooted in one place can change in expression while still carrying where it came from.

What changes in appearance can still carry its roots.

Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Dimensions: 30 × 40 cm
Year: 2026
Framed: Framed and ready to hang

A horse emerges through a shifting portal of colour and light, carrying a sense of movement, courage and transformation.

Portal Horse explores passage, movement and spiritual transition. The horse appears between worlds — emerging through layered blues, turquoise and earth tones while Arabic calligraphy moves across the surrounding space.

The circular form suggests a threshold rather than a fixed destination, while the horse becomes a symbol of courage, freedom and the strength required to move through change.

Layered colour, expressive marks and calligraphic elements bring together contemporary abstraction with cultural memory and symbolism.

Some thresholds are crossed not by certainty, but by courage.

Medium: Mixed media on canvas
Dimensions: 40 × 30 cm
Year: 2026
Framed: Framed and ready to hang

I have always been fascinated by the peacock , its colour, presence and extraordinary display.

Peacock grew from that fascination, exploring the bird through expressive colour, layered marks and flowing lines rather than precise representation. Blues, turquoise and touches of gold move through the composition, while the sweeping tail creates rhythm and movement across the surface.

There is something almost theatrical about the peacock: confident, elegant and impossible to overlook. In this work, I wanted to capture that sense of presence while allowing colour and gesture to move beyond the bird’s literal form.

The result sits between representation and abstraction, recognisably a peacock, but equally a celebration of colour and movement.

An expressive study of a bird that has always captured my attention.

Medium: Mixed media on canvas
Dimensions: 30 × 40 cm
Year: 2026
Framed: Unframed

Some paths are felt before they are seen.

Path Immersed explores the experience of moving through uncertainty rather than observing it from a distance. A narrow blue path draws the eye through a dark, layered landscape toward an opening of light.

Surrounding forms suggest trees, rock and shadow without fully resolving into a particular place, allowing the passage itself to become the focus. The work reflects those moments when the way forward is not completely visible, yet something within us continues to follow it.

Part of the Mystical Pathways series, the painting explores intuition, transition and the quiet courage of continuing forward.

Some paths are felt before they are seen.

Medium: Acrylic and oil on canvas
Dimensions: 30.5 × 40.6 cm
Year: 2026
Framed: Ready to hang

A path begins to reveal itself through uncertainty and shadow.

Path Emerging explores the moment when direction begins to appear, even before the destination is clear. Layers of deep blue and muted earth tones surround a narrow passage of light, drawing the eye through the centre of the composition.

The work reflects those periods of transition when clarity comes gradually — not as a sudden answer, but as something discovered by continuing forward.

Part of the Mystical Pathways series, it considers movement, uncertainty and the quiet emergence of possibility.

Sometimes the path appears only after we begin to move.

Medium: Acrylic and oil on canvas
Dimensions: 30.5 × 40.6 cm
Year: 2026
Framed: Ready to hang

An arch between what is known and what lies beyond.

Mystical Pathways explores the moment of transition — the point between staying and stepping forward. A weathered arch opens onto a luminous blue passage, drawing the eye through layers of shadow, texture and softened light.

The arch becomes more than an architectural form. It suggests a passage between certainty and uncertainty, the familiar and the unknown, and the quiet decision to continue even when the destination cannot yet be seen.

As the central work in the Mystical Pathways series, the painting introduces an ongoing exploration of passage, intuition and transformation.

Some crossings begin before we know where they will lead.

Medium: Acrylic and oil on canvas
Dimensions: 50 × 60 cm
Year: 2025
Framed: Ready to hang

Movement becomes a form of stillness, reflection and connection.

Mystical Dance is inspired by the poetry and movement of the whirling dervish. Sweeping layers of colour and expressive marks create a sense of circular motion, while the figure emerges within the surrounding abstraction.

The work explores the contrast between outward movement and inward stillness — the idea that rhythm, repetition and surrender can become a pathway toward reflection and connection.

Layered acrylic and oil allow colour, gesture and texture to move across the surface, creating an atmosphere that feels both energetic and contemplative.

Within movement, there can be stillness.

Medium: Acrylic and oil on canvas
Dimensions: 30 × 40 cm
Year: 2025
Framed: Ready to hang

A journey forward, where the path is uncertain but the light remains.

Into the Light explores the experience of moving through uncertainty toward something not yet known. A solitary figure follows a narrow path through the vast desert landscape, dwarfed by the surrounding mountains and drawn toward the light beyond.

The figure is deliberately small. The landscape carries the scale and weight of the journey, while the path provides a quiet sense of direction. There is no clear destination — only the decision to continue.

Inspired by the desert landscapes of Jordan, the work reflects a recurring idea in my practice: that resilience is not always dramatic. Sometimes it is simply continuing to move forward when we cannot yet see where the path will lead.

The way forward does not have to be certain for us to keep walking.

Then keep the specifications concise:

Medium: Acrylic and oil on canvas
Dimensions: 90 × 79 cm
Year: 2026
Framed: Unframed

A reflection on gratitude, faith and the quiet strength found in remembering our blessings.

In Gratitude brings together the horse, Arabic calligraphy and light as expressions of reflection and spiritual connection. The horse emerges from the darker foreground with a sense of strength and stillness, while the illuminated opening beyond suggests light, possibility and presence.

Arabic calligraphy is woven into the composition rather than treated as decoration, becoming part of the emotional language of the work. Layers of blue, gold, violet and earthy tones move between shadow and illumination, creating an atmosphere that feels both intimate and contemplative.

The work reflects gratitude not as a single moment, but as a way of recognising what remains with us — strength, faith, memory and the blessings we sometimes overlook.

Blessings remembered, blessings returned.

Medium: Mixed media on canvas
Dimensions: 40 × 50 cm
Year: 2026
Framed: Framed and ready to hang

A narrow passage rises through the warm stone of Petra, where light becomes a quiet guide rather than a distant goal.

Held in Petra explores movement through an ancient landscape shaped by time, memory and presence. Built with layered acrylic and textured sand, the surface carries the weight and memory of the desert itself, grounding the work in place.

The composition suggests movement yet remains held — a gentle ascent shaped by earth, light and stillness.

Part of the Held by the Desert collection, this piece reflects the experience of being supported and contained within the vastness of the landscape.

Some places do not simply surround us; they hold us.

Then standardise the specifications:

Medium: Mixed media – acrylic and textured sand on canvas
Dimensions: 30 × 40 cm
Year: 2026
Framed: Framed and ready to hang

A meeting of movement, light and gratitude.

Golden Script brings together the strength and movement of the horse with expressive Arabic calligraphy, allowing image and script to emerge through layers of turquoise, gold, yellow and deep shadow.

Rather than functioning as separate symbols, the horse and calligraphic marks become part of the same visual language. Areas of transparency and texture allow forms to appear and recede, giving the work a sense of movement and discovery.

The painting reflects an ongoing thread in Hala Kattab’s practice — exploring heritage, spirituality and resilience through contemporary abstraction.

Light speaks in the language of gratitude.

Medium: Mixed media on canvas
Dimensions: 40 × 50 cm
Year: 2025
Framed: Ready to hang

Inspired by the ancient landscape of Petra, this work layers memory, symbolism and imagination into a dreamlike desert composition.

Dream of Petra is not intended as a literal depiction of place. Fragments of calligraphy, archaeological forms and traces of landscape emerge through layered colour and texture, creating the sense of memory surfacing and receding across the canvas.

The work reflects the way a place can remain with us long after we leave it — held not as a fixed image, but through fragments, atmosphere and feeling.

Part of the Held by the Desert collection.

Selected works from this series were featured as part of the set styling for the production Black Snow 3.

Some places remain within us, reconstructed through memory rather than remembered exactly as they were.

Then standardise the bottom:

Medium: Mixed media on canvas
Dimensions: 90 × 46 cm
Year: 2026
Framed: Unframed

A quiet passage through the desert, where movement slows and the landscape holds its own sense of time.

Desert Passage explores the stillness of movement — a journey not rushed, but felt. Figures and camel emerge gently from the earth tones, becoming part of the surrounding dunes rather than separate from the landscape.

Layered glazes create depth and warmth, allowing subtle shifts of colour and light to move through the work. The restrained figures and open passage evoke a landscape shaped as much by memory and contemplation as by physical place.

Part of the Held by the Desert collection.

Selected works from this series were featured in the set styling for the production Black Snow 3.

Some journeys are measured not by distance, but by what the landscape leaves with us.

Medium: Mixed media on canvas
Dimensions: 40 × 50 cm ← confirm this before saving
Year: 2026
Framed: Framed and ready to hang

Movement, freedom and surrender carried through the desert air.

Carried by the Wind captures a bird moving through a warm, swirling landscape of ochre, rust and softened gold. Rather than describing a particular place, the work evokes the sensation of being carried by forces larger than ourselves.

Layered colour and fluid movement allow the bird to emerge from the surrounding atmosphere, creating a sense of freedom, change and trust in the journey.

Sometimes resilience is not about resisting the wind, but learning how to move with it.

Medium: Acrylic and oil on canvas
Dimensions: 70 × 40 cm
Year: 2025
Framed: Unframed

A reflection on time, faith and the values that give meaning to the way we live.

Al-Asr draws inspiration from Surah Al-Asr, allowing Arabic calligraphy to become both the spiritual and visual centre of the work. The script unfolds within a circular composition, surrounded by warm copper and earth tones against a deep blue ground.

The work reflects on the passage of time and the enduring importance of faith, purposeful action, truth and patience. Rather than illustrating these ideas literally, the circular form and layered surface create a space for contemplation, a sense of continuity, movement and quiet persistence.

Through calligraphy, colour and texture, Al-Asr connects spiritual reflection with a contemporary visual language.

An invitation to pause, reflect, and consider what we carry forward through time.

Medium: Mixed media on canvas
Dimensions: 30 × 30 cm
Year: 2026
Framed: Framed and ready to hang