Cuadro

Noor Al Suwaidi's work explores the realms of portraiture and figurative abstraction. She rejects traditional representation, focusing on the more formal elements of painting. Color relationships, rather than real world depictions, become the subject of her work.

Al Suwaidi employs unnatural colors, which exist independently of the subject’s true colors. She places flat planes of unnatural color against one another without blending, and employs one or two colors to cover the negative spaces on her canvas in an execution influenced by the modernist master, Matisse’s “genius of omission.” Her brightly colored canvases comprised of bold shapes offer the illusion of figurative forms, without imposing specific images. She thus leaves it up the viewer to contribute depth and dimension to the images, in a similar manner in which one finds images in clouds.

Al Suwaidi’s works take shape in a spontaneous, rather than a preconceived manner as she sketches her subject matter. She adds an emotional dimension to her artwork through chromatic tension and contrast; thus, color infuses her lines and shapes with life. The artist likens the lines in her work to handwriting.

“Handwriting is the most human of abstractions. Each letter, every time, is slightly different and our minds discern key shapes, place them into pre-set molds and make sense of the whole: a letter. My drawing is my own handwriting of portraiture and the framework for my palette, which to me, highlights the temperature of the shapes.”

Noor Al Suwaidi (1981) carries a Masters of Arts in Curating Contemporary Design from Kingston University, London, in addition to a Bachelors of Arts in Studio Art from the American University in Washington D.C and a degree in Visual Communications from the American University of Sharjah. Her work has been exhibited in Berlin, London, Washington, DC, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah. The artist has curated exhibitions of Emirati artists both locally and internationally, and has contributed to art and cultural projects for both the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority and TDIC’s Cultural Department.