Meet the Artist

Working from his home studio in Washington D.C., HAZM, née Hazem Mansour, or simply ‘Haz’ is an abstract painter. Drawing on elements of expressionism, brutalism, minimalism, impressionism, and surrealism, HAZM sees art as both a byproduct of life and a means to uncovering the deeper self.

Never limiting himself to any one genre, his arsenal of acrylics, spray paint, resin, and graphite take his audiences into a sprawling patchwork of human temperaments. There’s much to explore here - jubilant multicolor washed canvas, nightmarish acrylic lacing textures, a palette knife‘s interpretation of a dreamy twilight - and beyond. HAZM’s technical approaches are unapologetically diverse: splattering, pours, dry brush, impasto, image impression, and hand drawing are all present, sometimes all in the same painting. Beyond brushstrokes and palette knives, there is the occasional usage of masonry tools or the oddity of gym equipment to add texture to his collections. 

Born in upstate New York and brought up in the Baltimore/Washington D.C. area to immigrant parents from Cairo, Egypt, HAZM’s first works as a child were autodidact pencil animations which later lead to inking his own original comic books as a teenager. Majoring in film and electronic media while in university lead to storyboarding and producer collaborations in short film productions. But it was his passion for art as a vehicle to self discovery that lead him to abstract visual storytelling. The common denominator of his work being the emotional draw of seemingly simple abstract subject matter. 

Creating a compelling range of imagery aimed to encourage viewers to project their own stories onto the canvas, art is an accessible and deeply psycho-spiritual adventure, according to HAZM. Insisting the art is never exclusively about the artist, “we learn about ourselves relative to the art we experience. Why you love something is equally relevant as why you don’t.”