Born and raised in Wad Medani, a small town on the banks of the Blue Nile in Sudan, Rashid Diab has always had a deep passion for travel. From a young age, he was drawn to discovering new places, different ways of living, and meeting new people. This fascination with movement and space led him to reflect on his relationship with distance and dimensions. He often pondered why things have specific shapes and sizes at certain moments. These questions became an obsession, and the only resolution was to paint—and to continue painting. Painting became a necessity, an intrinsic part of his being, deeply embedded in his subconscious. Over time, this need to create transformed into a biological instinct, strengthening his connection to the world around him.
In 1980, he traveled to Spain on a scholarship to further his studies in art. It was during this period that he fully appreciated his diverse Sudanese heritage. Since then, he has cultivated and expanded an extensive vocabulary of images and patterns, drawing inspiration from Sudan’s rich cultural history.
He believes that art is knowledge. An artist must be an avid reader and fully conscious of their contribution to the world of art. Every stroke, every line—whether consciously transferred from the artist’s mind to the canvas or left unexpressed—is part of life itself. During the creation of a piece, an artist navigates through different schools and tendencies, experiencing time as both a fleeting moment and an eternal continuum. It is not about the past, present, or future, but about how he can achieve the right color, shape, and form to express that fraction of time.
However, he does not consider his work to be a mere coincidence of time or an incarnation of a singular moment. Instead, it is a reflection of humanity—a material result of our species, which he strives to express. His use of color and form may illustrate sorrow, happiness, hope, or despair, but the most profound element is the nostalgia for a universal experience. Through his art, he is most concerned with universality. For him, art is ultimately about human connection. It sustains cultures, reflects the material aspects of civilizations, and reminds us of our shared responsibility to preserve and evolve our cultural history.