oohart艺术

Oil Pastel on Paper Though investigating everything from figuration to total abstraction, Suhaylah H. is consistently drawn back to landscapes as a means of exploring the connection between material and immaterial worlds. Her studies in Environmental Geography and Comparative Literature at university fuelled her obsession with the intersection of landscape and Symbolism. Suhaylah is fond of the term ‘dreamscapes’ frequently given to her art, especially as she often references scenes or ideas from her subconscious. Yet she strives for a paradoxical lucidity she thinks is necessary to make the ethereal believable: “It’s a funny thing to draw shapes that describe movement while inevitably betraying their own stillness by virtue of being flat. In the end, it’s about being able to look at an image thinking you’re forever on the cusp of something you can’t quite reach, nevertheless being utterly enraptured, allowing yourself to experience whatever it is that occurs when the supposed boundaries of all things corporeal and intangible vanish.” Birds that are not birds, trees that hang down to transform into pools of water, rocks whose reflections are more real than they are, and phantoms that connect your eyes to the natural world. The gestures and materials Suhaylah uses in drawing and painting go a long way to maintaining this state of mind and space. It is a subtle creative balance, using the immediacy and density of oil pastels to bring about something ruminative and fluid.