For Karma Bint Abbas, becoming an artist wasn't exactly one big decision. Looking back, it feels more like a series of small clues that had been there from the beginning, waiting to be joined up.

It started with early art classes under one of Amman's most respected teachers, where creating felt far more natural than following any strict school curriculum. Then there was her grandmother — an artist herself, and still her granddaughter's biggest supporter and toughest critic. And then came New York, where Karma moved to study art, only to find that being away from home drew her closer to the cultures she had grown up surrounded by and gave her a way to turn those influences into an artistic language all her own.

So perhaps finding your calling isn't one big light-bulb moment after all. For Karma, it was these small pieces gradually falling into place, one leading to the next. We spoke about where they came from, how they shaped the artist she is today, and where she is taking them from here.

— You knew from quite a young age that you wanted to be an artist. Where do you think that passion came from?

— Creativity runs right through the family, really — especially on my father's side. My grandmother is an artist, my father has got a real artistic streak, and even my great-grandfather used to dabble in painting and portraiture.

So creativity was always around me growing up, but art became much more personal once I started struggling academically at school. I never really thrived in that very structured setup — off to school in the morning, sat at a desk, following the same routine until the afternoon. I think I always needed a bit more freedom to explore things in my own way.

Around that time, I started taking classes with a really well-known Jordanian artist called Aziz Amoura, who has sadly since passed away. He taught so many artists in Amman and gave us those crucial foundational skills. I would go along three times a week, and it became the one place where I could switch off from everything else. That was where I properly felt like I was flourishing.

Aziz pushed me to pursue art, but more than that, he taught me to genuinely love it. It was the one thing that gave me confidence and kept me going — I knew I was good at it, but just as importantly, it was something I truly loved doing.

I think that is also where that slight sense of rebellion in art came from for me. It gave me a space where I didn't have to fit into such a rigid structure — I could think differently, experiment and trust my own instincts. And I think that freedom was a huge part of why I knew I wanted art to be part of my life.

— How did your parents react when you told them you wanted to become a professional artist?

— Thankfully, my parents were incredibly open-minded and supportive. Growing up, there was still very much this idea around me that art wasn't necessarily something you pursued as a serious career — it was often seen more as a hobby. My parents never saw it that way.

They encouraged me to take classes, helped me build my portfolio and eventually supported my decision to move to New York to study art. They really were the backbone of everything I am today, and I am incredibly grateful for that because I know not every artist has the same experience.

In more traditional families, there can be a lot of pressure to choose a career that feels safer or more conventional — medicine, law, something with a very clear path. I was incredibly lucky that my parents never tried to steer me in that direction.

— You have Palestinian, Jordanian and Turkish roots. How has that mix of cultures shaped your work?

— My mother is Palestinian but grew up in Jordan, my father is Jordanian, and my great-grandmother was Turkish — so I grew up surrounded by all of these cultures at once. Looking back, textiles were how I absorbed them most naturally. They were simply part of what I saw around me, long before I understood what any of it meant.

Take my Palestinian side: there were the traditional thobes and their embroidery, and I was always drawn to the symbols stitched into them — what they meant, how they were made, and why embroidery was so closely tied to women and their roles. Growing up in Jordan added another layer to that curiosity, through Bedouin weaving. It wasn't just the striking colors and patterns that caught my eye, but the deeper question of why people wove in the first place, and why fabric held such an important place in Bedouin life.

My Turkish heritage came into the picture differently. We went to Turkey every summer, and I remember noticing embroidered silk cushions, floral motifs, intricate beading — details that felt distinct from what I saw at home, yet somehow spoke the same visual language. So even though these traditions came from different worlds, textiles were the thread that ran through all of them.

That fascination took hold long before I ever picked up a needle myself. It wasn't until I moved to New York and started taking different courses that I began looking back at everything I had grown up around — finally understanding its cultural weight, and slowly figuring out how to weave those different influences into my own work.

— You started out with quite traditional drawing and painting, but today your work looks very different. How did you find your way to textiles and the style you have now?

— In high school, I was a very traditional drawer — technique was everything. I was mainly focused on looking at an object and learning how to draw it properly: the right shadows, reproducing exactly what was in front of me. So it was less about developing my own style and more about just training my hand.

That started to shift when I got to Pratt. I began experimenting with different mediums, and at one point I took a course called Interwoven, which explored the history of textiles in art. We did workshops in weaving, dry felting and other techniques, and one day we learned how to needle-felt wool directly onto fabric.

Honestly, that was one of the most pivotal moments of my career. I remember walking out of that class completely lit up, with this feeling that I had stumbled onto exactly what I had been looking for without even knowing I was looking. It reconnected me with a fascination with textiles I had carried for years, and suddenly gave me a way to fuse that with drawing and painting.

And that is still how I think about my work today. I don't really see myself as having left drawing or painting behind — I have just changed the tools I use to do it. Wool has become my paint, reused fabric my pencil. In my head, I am still drawing and painting. I am just speaking a different language now.

— I also read that your grandmother was a major influence on you. Was she an artist herself?

— Yes — my grandmother is actually a very well-known artist in the Islamic art world, and she has contributed enormously to the art scene in Jordan and beyond. But honestly, her influence on me goes way beyond the work she made.

What really shaped me was her personality. She is incredibly strong-willed — she says exactly what is on her mind, isn't afraid to take risks — and growing up, I got a front-row seat to watching her build an identity that wasn't just "mother", "wife" or "daughter". She knew exactly what she wanted for herself, and she was fiercely committed to her career. She never stood still — she was always developing, exploring and pushing herself further.

I think women in general, and Arab women especially, are often taught to define themselves through their relationships to other people: who you are as a daughter, a wife, a mother. And I have seen so many women around me who have dreams and ambitions, but then marriage or motherhood comes along and, for one reason or another, those dreams get pushed aside.

My grandmother never did that. She raised her children, had a family and managed everything that came with that, but she also kept her own dreams alive and continued working as an artist. Watching her juggle all of those different parts of her life without giving up the part that belonged to her was incredibly inspiring to me. She showed me that you don't necessarily have to choose one or the other — you can hold all of those roles and still keep something that is entirely your own.

She has told me, more than once, that art saved her through her turbulent moments. And now that I am older, I catch myself recognising that exact same pattern in my own life. Whatever I am going through, I somehow always end up back at my art. There is something about the act of creating that just pulls me through — maybe because it comes from such a personal place.

— And what does she think of your work? Is she a supportive critic?

— She definitely critiques me! Whenever I show her something new, I brace myself, because I know she will tell me exactly what she thinks. She is never easy on me — but I actually think that is a good thing.

At the same time, she is incredibly proud of me, and she is one of the biggest reasons I am pursuing art at all. She has never cared what other people think, and she has always told me that a creative career, or any career that looks a little different, is still a valid one. Her advice has always been the same: don't listen to other people's expectations — pursue what you genuinely want and love.

— Moving to New York to study at Pratt was obviously a major turning point for you. How did it change the way you thought about art?

— I was a completely different person when I first arrived at Pratt. Suddenly I was living in Brooklyn, surrounded by artists and free spirits, in an environment nothing like the one I had grown up in back in Jordan. Nobody seemed worried about being judged — everyone was just doing what they wanted — and that gave me a real sense of freedom to explore.

I had always loved art, but the way I was taught in high school was still quite structured, with clear expectations around what "technically good" art was supposed to look like. At Pratt, I had to let go of that and start paying attention to my internal world instead — what I was feeling, what I was experiencing — and figure out how to let that shape the work.

That is probably the biggest thing Pratt taught me: to look both inward and outward, and let the two meet on the page — art as a record of what is happening around you, and what is happening inside you.

Pratt also showed me that a creative career doesn't have to follow one set path. I took a children's book illustration course there almost on a whim — and now I am actually working on one myself. I don't see myself as a traditional artist confined to gallery pieces and commissions; I would love to make prints, illustrate, try all sorts of things. For me, that is what a creative life looks like: moving freely between forms instead of picking just one.

— Can we talk a little about the book you are working on?

— It is still in development, so I can't say too much yet, but I am collaborating with a writer and we are building the story together. It is particularly close to my heart because it is inspired by my grandmother.

The story follows an artist grandmother through the eyes of a little girl growing up. She sees her not simply as a grandmother, but as an artist and a free spirit — someone with this wonderfully young, vibrant energy.

The lovely part is that my grandmother doesn't actually know about it yet — I want it to be a surprise. But she is constantly in my mind as I am developing the imagery: her style, her chunky jewellery, her red hair. So although she isn't directly involved in making the book, her presence runs through the whole thing.

— Has your practice and the themes you are working on changed since you moved to the United States?

— Definitely. When I first arrived at Pratt, I was genuinely a bit lost about what my own theme or style even was. I remember sitting in a studio class telling my professor I didn't know what to make. Up until then, I had been used to having an object in front of me, copying it, and getting that satisfying nod from a teacher: "You copied that beautifully," or "You shaded it exactly right." That was my whole idea of what a successful artist did — so I had a fair bit to unlearn.

My professor asked me a very simple question: "What are you feeling right now?" I told him I was homesick. He said, "Then make art about that."

That question really changed things for me. I started thinking about the Middle Eastern living rooms I had grown up around — my own home, my grandmother's home, all these familiar interiors I suddenly missed. My grandfather's sofa, a pillow in my mother's bedroom, the colours and patterns I remembered — I pieced all of that together from memory. That became Baiti, which means "my home" in Arabic.

In a way, Baiti was the beginning of finding my own artistic language, because it made me realise that the things I knew intimately — home, family, Arab culture, memory — could actually become the material for my work. And the funny thing is, this was before I had properly started working with textiles, but textiles were already there, hiding in plain sight. I was drawing patterns and using paint to mimic fabric, so that interest had been baked into the work from the start.

From there, my thinking naturally became broader. Being away from home didn't just make me think about what I missed; it also made me more aware of how the place I came from was perceived by other people. In the United States, I started thinking much more about how Arabs, Muslims and the Middle East were understood in the West, and how many misconceptions still existed around them. I realised I wanted my work not only to reflect my own relationship with that culture, but also to push back against some of those assumptions.

I made a piece based on a prayer mat, for instance, but instead of the colours you might traditionally expect, I used pale pinks and pastels, with hearts, flowers and stars scattered through it. I wanted it to feel calming and warm — to challenge this idea of Islam as harsh, or of Middle Eastern people as somehow inherently unpeaceful.

And when I think about it now, even Baiti was already doing some of that. It began with homesickness, but it also became a celebration of the beauty of Arab life — family, community and the sheer importance of gathering. A living room means so much in our culture: it is where people sit together, where conversations happen, where memories are made. I wanted that warmth to come through too.

— Your first exhibition in New York happened while you were still at Pratt. Was it something you had been consciously working towards?

— Not at all — it just sort of happened. It was my final year at Pratt, and the works in the exhibition were really a collection of paintings I had made over several semesters while I was still figuring out my style. I hadn't created them with an exhibition in mind, or even as a single body of work — though somehow they were all united by the same theme without me even trying.

The whole thing came together almost by chance. Through an artist friend in New York, I was introduced to a gallery owner in Manhattan. We met for coffee, I showed her my work, and things developed quite naturally from there. I already had all these pieces from previous semesters, so I began pulling them together and realised they made sense side by side — they were speaking to each other, with a thread running through them that I hadn't consciously set out to create.

— What is the most vulnerable work you have ever created?

— There is one piece with rubble, angels and butterflies that immediately comes to mind, but really, I would say the whole collection I made in response to what was happening in Gaza was probably the most vulnerable body of work I have done.

I was in my final year at Pratt when I started making those works, living in New York and already working on my thesis. Speaking about Palestine in the United States wasn't always easy at the time, so turning my entire thesis into a response to what was happening felt like a real leap of faith. Not everyone agreed with me, and there were people who didn't like the work or what I was doing with it. But I reached a point where I simply had to make it — it was what felt right in that moment.

That experience also changed my visual language quite dramatically. I couldn't make happy work anymore. The pinks and pastels I would normally reach for just didn't reflect what I was feeling, so my colours turned duller and darker, and I found myself working with symbols that carried much heavier meanings.

I have always believed artists have a role in documenting history — everyone does that differently, of course, but for me, at that particular moment, I couldn't separate what I was creating from what I was witnessing. I felt I had to make work about Gaza.

— Tell me about the work inspired by Palestinians praying beneath a destroyed mosque. What did you want to capture in it?

— That piece came from a photograph I had seen of Palestinians praying beneath a mosque that had been destroyed. I was really moved by the fact that, despite everything happening around them, they were still praying. There was something incredibly powerful in that contrast between destruction and faith.

The colourful elements in the work are prayer mats. A prayer mat is where you pour your heart out and speak to God, so for me it became a symbol of resilience. Interestingly, though, some people saw those same shapes as caskets when they first looked at the piece. That wasn't something I had intended at all, but I found the contrast quite powerful — something I had created as a symbol of strength could be read by someone else as a symbol of loss.

— Looking at this piece, I can't help wondering: where do all the different fabrics in your work actually come from?

— Honestly, everywhere — I am a bit of a magpie about it. Some come from my family, some are my own, and others I have found or bought along the way. If someone in my family has a dress they have fallen out of love with, I will happily take it off their hands, and eventually a piece of it might find its way into my work. I cut everything into different shapes and needle-felt around the edges with wool to attach them.

A lot of the textiles I use now also trace back to a month I spent in India. When I first moved back to Jordan after New York, I went to Chennai, where my aunt lives with her Indian husband, and rather impulsively decided to take a block-printing course.

I learnt the technique and began printing my own fabrics, while also collecting textiles and prints I came across there. So a single piece might bring together something I printed myself in Chennai, a textile I picked up in India, a dress that once belonged to someone in my family and a piece of my own clothing.

— Butterflies keep appearing in your work. Why do you return to that symbol?

— Butterflies first entered my work in response to what was happening in Palestine. I am a fairly hopeful person by nature, and even when things are difficult, I always try to find something positive to hold onto. Somehow, the butterfly became the shape that hope took.

There is something I find incredibly beautiful about them, too. The are soft and delicate, yet carry so much meaning across different cultures — from transformation and hope to the souls of those who have passed away.

— There is another work inspired by the Jordanian landscape. What drew you to that subject?

— I made that piece last April for the Affordable Art Fair in Amman. It was spring, everything was turning that wonderful green, and I just remember looking around, completely charmed by the landscape.

I have always loved the contrasts you find in the Middle East — greenery against dryness, churches and mosques popping up in the same view. Jordan has all of that, but also deserts, mountains, the sea. It is the landscape I grew up with, so there is something quite personal in it for me.

There wasn't a particularly heavy concept behind this one, if I am honest. I just wanted to make something that came from my love for that landscape and made me happy. I brought in the materials I naturally reach for — wool and textiles — along with the Hand of Fatima, a symbol of protection in our culture.