We'll let Leila herself introduce her art:
In this latest group of paintings, I have merged visual impressions, past recollections, the colours of
my heritage together with new experiences and influences. Predominantly, I have drawn inspiration from
Renaissance paintings. From their sense of pictorial dramas, tales of rebirth and tragedy, their theatrical
interpretation of movement and design, the paradoxical presence of both lightness and solidity - like
the perpetual struggle towards enlightenment, rooted somewhere between dreamscapes and reality. This
has been the challenge of my work; to capture that buoyancy between two realms, the floating fluid
movements, the echoes that resonate between past and present, suspended and uncertain. Explosions of
drama, in colour and texture, influenced and propelled by the works of master painters such as Ruebens,
Titian, Caravaggio, Raphael - who brought about the dawn of Renaissance, giving way to new paths of
exploration.
I have used the surface of my canvas to accommodate the reaches of imagination, to stretch physical
gestures and strokes of colossal movement, to capture a clash of currents within pictorial representations,
swirling articulations of space.
Having lived in Greece for many years has added a sense of historical drama to my work - the tempestuous sails of Greek mythology and the bold ancient temples. Its passion that often verges on the melodramatic, the magical, is in contrast to Islamic artistic disciplines. Emotion is the opposite of geometry, yet, I have strived to harmonize between the two, to find a meeting point, an artistic treaty.
The ghosts I have drawn from are inspired by translations from clay tablets of the Sumerian goddess Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth. The complexities of this forgotten goddess has both fascinated me and stirred within me a sense of longing, of loss. She has moved me, even through this gulf of time, and I have painted the obscured outline of her spirit, in many layered dimensions and shadows. Inanna embodies woman throughout time, in her strength and power, and her vulnerability.
My paintings make sense of the fragments, like the archeologist, the assembler of fragmented stones, the unifier of broken pieces of self.
Leila Kubba Kawash
May 1999
To send a message to the Artist please EMail Leila and we will forward.
(All images copyright © L.K.Kawash 1999)
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through the exhibition, painting by painting, press
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