May Elshamy

May Elshamy was born in Marburg 1985, West Germany. Lived and raised in Cairo Egypt, surrounded by musicians and artists of her family. She graduated from The Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo in 2008 and acquired a Diploma in Fashion at the Instituto di Modo Burgo in 2009. 

After graduating she found herself working in variety of fields as time went on, including a job as a Fashion Designer, Marble Designer and Carpenter. She also started taking courses for 2D animation and colour correction.

Between 2008 and 2018 she experimented with many techniques and periods such as pop art, contemporary art, abstract, academic drawings and paintings. She also created short ‘Stop Motion’ videos.

In April 2019 she went to Barcelona attend two weeks workshop at the Barcelona Atelier focusing only on portraits. There she tried to take all the skills and knowledge from the Artist / instructor Xavier Denia. 
In summer 2021 she was accepted on an online course with the established artist Stephen Bauman to gain a wider range of knowledge and experiences in Portraits. 
She has been focusing on drawing portraits with pencil and charcoal more than oil colours. 

May has been drawing the human faces that inspires her by the character and the personality, finding similar feelings and emotions between them and her own reflection.

She also focuses more on the eyes, into her artworks. She learns and refine her technique to find new ways to capture and connect her model’s subconscious.

Her artworks intend to celebrate peace and joy, love and caring feelings. She hopes that her drawings and paintings will strengthen people’s hope for a better life, contributing to ease their mind and help them make peace with themselves. 

Group Exhibitions 

• 2011 - Art Gallery, Cairo. 
• 2011 - The Youth Exhibition/Salon ElShabab at Opera House, Cairo. 
• 2012 - Le Souk Gallery, Cairo.
• 2012 - ‘Pulse II’ at Tache Gallery, Cairo.                                 
• 2013 - Hanager Gallery at Opera House, Cairo. 
• 2015 - Artabitta Gallery, Cairo. 
• 2019 - ‘Nights with Rodents’ at Arcade Gallery, Cairo.
• 2023 - The MEAM Hall at MEAM Museum, Barcelona.

Solo Exhibition 

• 2018 – ‘If you rescue me, I’ll be your friend forever’, Arcade Gallery, Cairo.