I love exploring what drives artists — the reasons behind their work are rarely obvious, usually layered with personal stories and thoughts that have been forming for years. And what could be more beautiful than tracing those inspirations through generations?

Often, it comes back to grandmothers — the ones who give a kind of love that feels steady and unconditional, who quietly dedicate so much of their lives to their grandchildren, and who share memories of a world we don’t just struggle to remember — we can barely imagine.

I still remember mine telling me how she would fight off snakes after school and steal eggs from the chickens, trading them for sweets. It sounds almost unreal now, but maybe that is exactly why those stories stayed.

And that is where we are going — into stories like these, carried through generations and finding their way into the work of Middle Eastern artists. Here we go.

Sara Al Abdali is a Saudi contemporary artist whose work often draws on personal memory and regional identity — but in this case, it comes back to something much more specific: her grandmother.

One of the most central pieces connected to her is Maqboula, a work she created just two months after her grandmother passed away — a quiet, almost unintentional tribute.

What makes it especially compelling is that it didn’t begin that way. She originally set out to paint Taif, the city her grandmother was born in. But somewhere in the process, the work shifted — it became less about a place, and more about a person. Or rather, she realised they were never separate: “I slowly realised she was the only Taif I knew,” Sara says.

In the final version of the piece, her grandmother appears both directly and symbolically — as a Simorgh, a mythical bird from Persian and Sufi traditions associated with spirit, and transformation. As Sara describes it, Maqboula becomes “a Simorgh roaming the skies of her green town she had always longed for,” turning the work into something beyond memory — a way of letting her exist somewhere else.

Taqwa Al Naqbi is an Emirati artist who created a deeply personal project dedicated to her grandmother as part of her graduation from the University of Sharjah’s College of Fine Arts.

The idea began in a very simple, everyday moment. Surrounded by her nieces and nephews, she would let them draw — and found their works unexpectedly abstract, yet full of meaning, almost like their own language. It made her wonder how someone from a completely different generation might approach the same act.

That curiosity led her to her grandmother.

As she can't read or write, Taqwa offered her another way to express herself: “draw whatever you want to tell me.” Through it, stories began to unfold — small details turning into memories. Taqwa later described the drawings as almost Picasso-like — not in style, but in their emotional weight and freedom.

The exchange went on to shape another project, My Grandmother’s Six Dresses, rooted in the traditional Emirati mkhawar. Through it, she turns memory into something visible — a soft, wordless way of preserving stories that carry both personal and cultural meaning.

Aya Ghanameh is a Palestinian-American illustrator and designer whose work sits somewhere between family memory and Palestinian identity — always close and always personal.

This comes through beautifully in one of her latest projects, Everything Grows in Jiddo’s Garden — the book by Jenan Matari, fully illustrated by Aya.

The characters are rooted in real references provided by Matari, a four-time award-winning Palestinian hakawati (traditional storyteller). You see it in the details — the grandfather, Jiddo, always wearing the key to his home in Palestine on his belt; the mother; and, of course, the grandmother, Teta, always in her traditional dress.

But it becomes even more personal in These Olive Trees, where Aya turns directly to her own family history — to her grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s Nakba story. After the displacement, their thoughts kept returning to the olive trees that once surrounded their home before the war. That is what gives these trees their weight — they feel like a quiet link to a place they were forced to leave behind.

While the illustrations appear light and bright, Aya once shared that one page felt especially heavy to illustrate, carrying both the past and the present her family still lives with.

Almaha Jaralla is an Emirati painter and mixed-media artist whose practice is rooted in one central source: family archives — and, more specifically, the story of her grandmother, Shadia.

Shadia, originally from Yemen, once drove alone across the Arabian Peninsula — from Aden to Kuwait, and eventually to the UAE and what her granddaughter does is Jaralla builds this story in her art through old photographs, memories passed down by her mother, and conversations with her grandmother herself.

What emerges isn't just a personal story, but a different sense of time — a Yemen that felt more socially open than we might imagine today. Jaralla’s grandmother studied abroad, dressed freely, and moved through life with a certain ease — something that, at the time, was entirely normal.

That same openness carries through in the way Jaralla describes her grandmother. In Kuwait, she appears in photographs relaxed and sociable, speaking to everyone around her. In Jaralla’s work, she becomes more than a figure from the past — a reference point for movement and independence.

Malak Mattar is a Palestinian painter from Gaza whose work is rooted in lived memory — of family, of war, but above all, of women. Her paintings are often centred on female figures, so it is no surprise that those closest to her — her mother and grandmother — become her main reference points.

That connection takes its most tender form in her illustrated children’s book Malak — Sitti’s Bird. “Sitti” — grandmother in Arabic — is not just a character, but a presence that holds the whole story together.

At the book's centre is Malak, a young girl in Gaza, moving between ordinary moments — school, the sea, Fridays at her grandmother’s house — and the sudden rupture of war. When the bombings begin, life narrows into fear and waiting. In that space, she turns to painting.

After 50 days of war, she returns to school with the paintings she created during almost two months of unstoppable bombing, and they become an exhibition.

Running quietly through the story is Sitti’s bird. At one point, it is lost when her grandmother’s home is destroyed, and yet it finds its way back to her, as if nothing truly disappears. Here, the bird becomes something more — a quiet metaphor for freedom, for return, for what refuses to be contained.