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The controversy over art and its relationship to the audience seems to be naturally inherent in the artwork and the artist wherever they may be. And everywhere, there are staunch believers in art for art's sake, as there are those who defend the argument that art should be accessible to the general public and should relate directly to their concerns and daily life, just as there are those who fluctuate in different points in between these two positions.

Issam Bader, born in the year of the catastrophe, 1948, was part of the early movement of Palestinian artists involved in expressing the political struggle of the Palestinian people. Even though his expression was first portrayed on Canvas and in more direct political terms, more recently, he has moved to large murals (4 X 3 meters square) with folkloric motifs which occupy public spaces as a way of involving the general public in the artistic product.

Born in Hebron, Bader as a child watched the artisans blowing glass making beautiful glassware and the clay masters forming on their wheels traditional pots and vases, as he became closely familiar with the Palestinian women's embroidery of Halhoul and Beit Ummar. He also grew up surrounded with the beautiful traditional woolen rugs made in Samou village which boast beautiful bright colors of yellow, orange, deep red, and blue. The beautiful Islamic calligraphy and art found in Hebron's famous religious site, the Ibrahimi mosque, also became part of the artist's aesthetic constitution.

All of these elements and motifs can be found prominently displayed in his mural work at the Grand Park Hotel and Al Ayyam Newspaper headquarters in Ramallah. His motifs of the pigeon, recurrent in almost all his works, the window overlooking another horizon, the simplified figures of women with long braided hair ( see front cover), Arabic calligraphy, and embroidery all come together to form a distinct expression of folkloric material in a contemporary outfit. The use of poetry verses quoted from famous Arab and Palestinian poets gives a special character to each mural relevant to its surroundings, its date, and its expression.

Bader views his murals as a part of the development of local architecture, whereby the architect or the owner of the building reserve a space in their structure for a ceramic mural that will become an integral part of the building. The mural could constitute a part of its external structure as in The Grand Park Hotel, or the Ramallah Municipality, or its internal design as in Al Ayyam Newspaper headquarters in Ramallah. With the construction boom in Palestine, and particularly in Ramallah, and the rising 5 and 6 and 10 storey buildings of straight plain white stone, Baders' work adds a certain charm and character to local architecture, which seems to be developing into cubicles of white stone set against the gray background of construction gravel.