Many of Shingray’s works swirl in the spaces between abstraction and representation. The viewer of Shingray’s work will be conscious of a constant buffeting from despair to hope, from a celebration of beauty to an exploration of the human capacity for inferno. Whatever his specific subject, Shingray’s sweeping gestures, bold lines, and melding of colour give birth to integrated wholes that seem to embody the movement of life itself.

Two cities have had a formative influence on Shingray’s artistic trajectory, Swakin and Istanbul. Although when Shingray arrived in Istanbul, he did not yet know he wanted to pursue a fine art career, he did follow as a child the activities of art students coming from Khartoum to Swakin to draw the splendour of Swakin’s Islamic architecture and city life as part of their graduation thesis for the Khartoum Fine Arts School.

Shingray considers Ustad Babikir, a leading Swakin artist, to have been his first art teacher. In Istanbul, he was much influenced by Gregory Wolf, an American professor at Bogazici University, with whom Shingray worked for six years before departing from Turkey.