Blurry faces, pink skies and video game worlds: step inside Hawazin's candy-coloured paintings

Hawazin's paintings feature figures in crisp white thobes and ghutras, their faces dissolved into a gentle haze, seated on ornate armchairs or standing among hydrangeas and roses. Look closely, and the faces have the smeared softness of a photograph enlarged past its resolution, as if a screenshot from a group chat had been pulled through a lens covered in syrup. Edges melt, and the flat candy backgrounds make each figure look cut out and dropped in, like an avatar waiting on a character-select screen.

Even her roses look like digital stickers, pasted on with a photo-editing app. But the reality is, it's all crafted by hand by the Saudi artist, who works from a studio in Brixton, DJs, performs her own music and is about to finish a second MA in Curating at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Her route to London took her across two countries first. "I am Saudi, born in the US, and spent my formative years moving between both countries," she says. Over a decade ago she arrived in London to study, earning a BA in Painting from Camberwell College of Arts and an MA from the Royal College of Art. After graduating in 2021, she stayed, "feeling very much at home in the art community I'd gotten to know over the years." That same year brought her first solo show with Incubator, followed by group and solo exhibitions across the UK, Berlin, Paris and New York.

When it comes to finding inspiration, Hawazin's sources sit well outside of painting. "I rarely look at paintings for inspiration, but music, anime and films often get me thinking creatively in the studio," she says. Lately, two video games have taken over her imagination, Silent Hill and Resident Evil, which she picked up through friends who kept urging her to play. "I find it really captivating to wander through these somewhat lifeless places, trying to figure out where you are," she says. "I especially love this about Silent Hill 2, where the landscape almost feels like a physical manifestation of something psychological." You can see these gaming connections in her work – like Silent Hill's fogginess distilled into the artist's signature blur. Or the pink skies and glowing colour fields carrying the aesthetic of a rendered sheen. "I love how vividly these worlds are imagined, to the point where they feel like entirely possible realities. And maybe, in some way, that's what I'm trying to do with my own work too."

From the gaming screen to real life, Hawazin often finds influences while on the move. "I also get a lot of ideas when I'm in transit, on a long tube ride, a train or a plane," she explains, jotting fleeting thoughts into her Notes app. In the studio, she invents her own methods, because she lacks the patience to look up how things are done. "It can be messy, but it often opens up possibilities I wouldn't have found otherwise." It also comes as no surprise to learn that her newest studio companion is a game controller. "I need to enjoy my time to be creative, so I keep reminding myself that I need that sense of freedom and uncertainty in my practice, and I find beauty in the lack of structure."

In a recent painting, Scent of My Reflection, the scene grew from something recognisable in the Gulf, featuring perfume bottles, a jewellery box, prayer beads and a small mirror across a hot-pink dreamscape. "The painting probably resembles almost every woman's dresser in the Gulf, and I was drawn to something so familiar and ordinary, yet layered with so many different associations," she says. "Fragrance threads through so many aspects of life in the Gulf; it marks our rituals, welcomes guests, signals self-image, triggers nostalgia, and fills our spaces with comfort and meaning." She adds, "It's invisible, but incredibly personal, almost an extension of the person wearing it. And, not to be biased, but I do think we have the best taste in scents."

What's more, her work, as a whole, examines self-representation and gender in the Gulf, drawing on the social structures she grew up around. "If my work encourages someone to reflect on their own memories, upbringing, or the social structures related to their identity that have shaped them, then that's a win for me."

Having just submitted her final research paper, Hawazin is producing her first album and will perform it at Cairo Jazz Cafe in Cairo next month. Her calendar is excitingly full, and she is planning a curatorial project with friends and trying out new paintings for a possible show next year – stay tuned!