Khaled Atieh was born in 1964 in Rusifa, a suburb of the Jordanian capital Amman. Of Palestinian descent, he was born deaf and speech-impaired. In his youth, he lived for a number of years in Egypt. Back in Amman he trained to be a carpenter at an institute for people with impaired speech and hearing.

Since he was young Khaled has sketched and painted. For him this is the best way to communicate. He worked for a couple of years as a carpenter, but continued to develop his talent for painting. His hobby became his profession. In 1986, he started to work at the art department at the Prince Ali Institute for Deaf and Handicapped People in the Jordanian city of Zarqa. Since 1993, Khaled Atieh has worked as a lecturer in fine arts at the University of Amman.

Khaled’s work is exciting and multi-facetted. Every painting is a surprising composition of forms and colours. Closer inspection reveals yet more new elements. People and animals are his inspiration; the canvas reflects his emotion. Sometimes controlled and balanced, then again, impulsive and unpredictable. Here secretive and frightening, there colourful and explosive. His paintings often convey the mystic beauty of a fairy tale from a Thousand and One Nights.

Khaled Atieh mainly works with oil on canvas. He has exhibited his work alone or in groups in Jordan and neighbouring countries, and since 1998 in the Netherlands and Belgium. In 2001, he won first prize at the prestigious Al-Shariqa Competition for Fine Arts in the United Arab Emirates.