As a painter, Nawras Nahar from Syria is more of an illustrator of stories. They are life stories, full of details, in which the cultural tradition of Syria plays a role as well as the universal world. There is also much to see and more and more to discover in his works. From a dim background loom symbolic representations of people, plants and animals. All of this is stylized by Nawras in soft colors. Like patchworks, his paintings combine different stories into an aesthetic unity. Sometimes gentle, other times poignant, but always poetic. 

Raafat Ballan also from Syria is the youngest of this select group. Despite his relatively young age, his work shows traditional characteristics. He works as a painter of people emphatically figurative. Partly because of the quiet compositions, this work evokes associations with 19th century painting of realism. This makes Raafat's working method, in which he paints mainly the outlines of his figures on a background of black paper, all the more surprising. It gives an unexpected modernism to this subdued work. So does the individuality of the persons depicted. They are compassionate, but visibly marked by their experiences and for that reason poignant.