Abdulnasser Gharem is a self-taught artist who spent 23 years in the Saudi Arabian army, eventually rising to lieutenant colonel. Life in the military was bureaucratic, a world populated with procedures, protocol and paperwork — “rejected,” “accepted,” “check paid,” he says.

Which explains why Gharem’s work is brimming with stamps — as subjects and as material to construct his art. His stamp paintings are textured, bumpy canvases made up of rubber stamps. And they’re brimming with hidden messages, read backward, like a stamp. Here he helps us to deconstruct one painting, the aptly titled “Camouflage.”

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