Gameel Shafik watercolors and pen-and-ink drawings stand somewhere between impressionism and naivism with distinct cultural Egyptian motifs. Simple and with a few elements centrally placed and hardly any surrounding details, his pictures often reveal a sketchy freshness but strong and intentional composition. Fish, cats, and horses, in addition to humans populate Shafik’s narratives. The struggle between good and evil is a recurring theme in his pictures, typically the fish representing the good forces and the cat representing the evil forces. The horse being a positive and forceful symbol for Shafik, represents man with all his big, mighty, and sexual attributes. In his many fertility motifs, Shafik presents stories about relationships and the external forces that affect them.
