Series 2022-2023:

My art practice is rooted in a spiritual pursuit of ancestral knowledge. Through the language of abstraction, I depict multidimensional psychic landscapes allowing the subconscious to communicate through form. This is a means for me to portray the unseeable and explore notions of mysticism, ancestry, and (dis)connection.

Abstraction acts as a vessel for this exploration and is a tool for me to expand my intuition and sense of connection with all life. My oil paintings begin as unpremeditated compositions exploring the relationship between colour, space, and texture. Colour is the driving force behind my pieces, and through this language I am able to convey emotions, feelings, and non-physical spaces. Abstraction teaches me how to live and to not fear ambiguity, rather to embrace it, and know that ancestral wisdom is always available to us.

In an evermore digital world, we experience a marginalization of spirit and a disconnection from nature; art can act as an antidote to the ever-evolving feeling of despondency and alienation. I always return to the imperative: “Art must recover its spiritual function” which abstraction is conducive to—I look to transcendentalist Agnes Pelton, Leonora Carrington, and Wassily Kandinsky, who all sought higher states of consciousness to access and share spiritual knowledge. I believe the role of the artist is to revive the spiritual in art, and I take on this duty, yearning to keep tradition alive and create that bridge between my ancestry and the future.

Series 2018-2022:

This series of work explores the unseeable. The theme ‘Limitless’ spurred my painting style in 2018 and since then, I have been creating these vibrant, abstract pieces. My paintbrush will often create unpremeditated drawings, embellishing chance-created compositions, with the ultimate aim of leaving the viewer lost amongst the biomorphic shapes.

By giving birth to this imaginative, psychic space, I seek to transcend the everyday and convey the spirit side of existence. These paintings speak to my aversion of any boundaries or rules, bringing about a more united and harmonious scene. My personal goal is to be able to freely communicate with the unconscious or higher parts of my Self and let it flow onto the canvas. I strive to dedicate myself to my inner voice/vision, that intuition which unveils the hidden world. Kandinsky believed that certain colours placed together could harmonise like chords on a piano. Like him, I seek to convey the depth of human emotions through a universal visual language of abstract forms and colours. This series maps my development, creating my own visual language through symbolism.

The works evoke an intimate dance: each exuberant stroke whirling with the previous one, creating a colourful choreography. It is as if the organic shapes are floating or flying across the expanses of hues. This elicits various feelings and interpretations depending on the person’s perception, achieving my goal of letting the viewer find their own meaning. Ultimately, my goal is to leave the viewer immersed in this boundless scene, full of nature, water and foreign entities.

Photography by Israa Aziz, 2022