Latifah Stranack

Obsession, 2021

Oil, oil bar, and pigment stick on canvas

Painting60 x 50 x 1cmShips from United Kingdom

£990

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About the Artist

Latifah Stranack (b.1981, UK) is a visual artist whose practice has always been a safe haven for her, a place to reflect, question and feel connected to all the events that occur all around. Latifah's mixed heritage has often been a source of inspiration, and growing up between cultures has created a rich narrative and atmosphere for her to think about and work from. Latifah has always been fascinated by cultural hybridity and how this can also cause conflict in some situations. Partially revealed, Latifah attempts to reshape her reality and bring memories from the past to life, forever layered in washes of paint, helping work through subconscious emotions and fears. The work she is compelled to create, enables and empowers Latifah to make sense of who she is, contemplating her identity and the world around her. Through painting, Latifah challenges the perceptions of her own unique existence, brown skin from my father and white skin from my mother. Female body and gaze with and without the veil and mask. Latifah invented her female heroines as a tool to explore these concepts, at times appearing half visible beneath a sheer veil, eyes staring intently through a traditional batoola mask, or with lids delicately closed, lost deep in contemplation. These women and their surroundings, that she obsessively paints, are all fictional members of my metaphorical tribe. Latifah lives and works in London, UK.

About the Artwork

This painting came about after I saw an archival image of a woman lying on a cushion. There was something about the way her body lay there that captured my attention. I knew I had to paint my interpretation of her for this painting, and I often return to this form repeatedly in other works. I love all forms of music and enjoy painting musicians, so I chose to include an oud player in juxtaposition with the woman in the foreground. I see music as something that soothes and consoles. So, in my imagination, the woman on the floor with the pink flushed face is slowly healed of her trauma through the sounds of the oud and the presence of the loyal and brave women who support and surround her in the room.

Other artworks by Latifah Stranack