Islamic wall art in Bahrain: calligraphy, geometry and the sea

Islamic wall art comes in two families, and choosing between them is the first decision of a Bahraini brief. Calligraphy has deep roots on the island: it is counted among the country's popular art forms, and state patronage of Islamic art led to Beit Al Quran, the Islamic museum in Manama. The island's galleries still hang calligraphy next to oils and acrylics.

Geometry carries the same tradition without words. Gulf majlis designers describe pared-back rooms that use a few geometric or calligraphic elements and a single-colour palette, so that one statement piece leads. A simple rule of thumb:

• Geometry suits rooms everyone uses: the family living room, the dining wall, an office reception, a hotel corridor.
• Calligraphy suits a wall chosen for it, where a verse or a name can hang with respect: above the majlis seating, facing the entrance, in a study.
• Letter shapes that only look Arabic are best left out: a Bahraini guest sees at once that they spell nothing.

Calligraphy is read before it is admired, so the letters must be right before any paint goes on. Wall pieces in the region draw on Quranic verses, poetry, wisdom sayings and proverbs, as two Amman designers profiled in 2019 do for homes and offices. Whatever yours will say, a verse, one of the Names of God, a blessing, a family name or a company motto, start from a calligrapher's artwork; we paint it by hand at the size of your wall and in the colours of your room, gold on deep blue, ink on sand or white on stone.

Many households hang a verse in the majlis or the entrance hall and keep it away from kitchens and bathrooms. Send the artwork on WhatsApp with the wall's width and the ceiling height; we tell you the size, format and finish it will paint best at. You need to own the image or have permission to use it, and the design can be kept exclusive to you. More on paintings from your own image.

Bahrain is an island, and its heritage is maritime. The country frames its pre-oil past around pearl divers, goldsmiths and trading ports, and a crafts shop in Bab Al Bahrain sells teak models of the banoosh, the pearling boat, and the boom, the trading dhow. Its painters return to the same ground: Abbas Almosawi paints souks, seafronts and fishing communities, somewhere between impressionism and abstraction, and Shaikh Rashid bin Khalifa Al Khalifa began with landscapes of the desert, the sea and historic sites. The director of The Art Station in Muharraq says Bahraini artists show work that has ‘to do with our memory, our past and our identity’.

For your brief, that gives a dependable list: the sea in calm blues and whites, a dhow under sail, the pearl as a motif, the carved doors and lattice windows of old Muharraq. In abstraction, a shoreline in blue, white and charcoal reads as the Gulf coast without becoming a postcard; Four Seasons Hotel Bahrain Bay built its interiors on the idea of a sea voyage. Camels and dunes belong to the mainland and, on an island, look like a stock picture of Arabia.

Surface matters in Bahraini painting. Balqees Fakhro moved from Bahraini landscapes and townscapes to large abstracts in muted colours and textures that evoke ‘the weathered walls of long-forgotten places’; a critic at ArtBAB, the country's art fair, called the palette of her 2018 abstractions typically Bahraini. At the 2019 fair, one of the island's best-known painters showed oils worked with gold, silver and bronze leaf and shiny resin, and Shaikh Rashid bin Khalifa Al Khalifa's recent work is wall-mounted aluminium installations drawing on Bahrain's traditional architecture.

In practice: a palette-knife or plaster surface in sand, cream and stone for the weathered-wall look; gold as an accent that catches the evening light rather than a whole ground; silver or charcoal in a grey-and-white room. Heavily textured and plaster pieces travel stretched or framed, so the relief arrives intact; frames come in gold, silver, black, white or wood. Ask for a side-lit photograph to judge the texture before you approve. See textured paintings and gold wall art.

Bahrain's own canon is full of people. Abdullah Al Muharraqi, regarded as the founder of modern art in the Gulf, has a whole wing of his work at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha; Ahmed Anan, a past president of the Bahrain Contemporary Art Society, centres his paintings on ‘the woman as an icon and muse’; and the new terminal at Bahrain International Airport hangs paintings by 15 Bahraini artists, from abstraction to realism. A portrait, a family scene or a favourite horse is at home in a private sitting room, a study or a bedroom.

The majlis is where the line usually falls: many Bahraini households keep paintings of people and animals out of the room where guests are received and hang them, if at all, in private rooms.

A younger generation of Bahraini artists has widened what hangs on local walls. Lulwa Al Khalifa, a self-taught painter, works mainly in oil with bold colours and textured brushstrokes; Leena Al Ayoobi blends Japanese manga with Bahraini folklore; and Zainab Noor makes custom pieces in white thread on canvas that bring people's memories to life. At ArtBAB in 2018, young Bahrainis showed pop-art portraits beside a street-art crew, and The Merchant House, a boutique hotel in Manama, hangs paintings and graffiti by up-and-coming Bahraini artists.

Mix the two registers room by room: heritage and calligraphy for the majlis and formal rooms, and raised plaster flowers or a palette-knife abstract in strong colour for the family lounge, a teenager's room or a home office. Browse colourful paintings and vibrant wall art.

Ideas come from everywhere: the owners of one Amwaj villa chose their décor from shops across Bahrain and Dubai. Whatever caught your eye, send a photograph of it and of your wall, with its width and the ceiling height, on WhatsApp. We shortlist designs in the same spirit from our catalogue of some 1,300, or design a piece for your project; any of them can be resized to the wall, recoloured to your fabric or stone, or varied into a series for several rooms. If the reference is an artist's work still in copyright, a hand-painted reproduction needs the rights holder's permission; otherwise we paint a new piece in its spirit.

One canvas can come first as your sample. Sizes for Bahraini rooms are in the Bahrain size guide, the walls of a villa and its majlis in villas and majlis, and the wider picture in our Bahrain wall art guide; designers, see art for residential interior designers.