Satta Hashem ساطع هاشم  

My drawings use simple traditional material (black ink on paper, and sometimes red wine) because of their power in recording spontaneous and immediate reactions to events, as when we speak spontaneously in daily life. Some of these drawings are complete art works in themselves and at the same time they may form the basis for paintings and other more developed art works. It means that they have had an impact on all my other artwork.

My paintings, however, have different aims. There, the basic theme is colour and its harmonious effect on the viewer. Within this, the forms take their shapes in lines and composition much related to the lines and forms in the drawings.

I have studied colour mainly from three points of view in the past three decades - first through art and its history; second through the environment where I am living; and third through science and scientific theories of colours.  Since 2004 I am working on an ongoing project which I have called Colour and Mind, resulting in five exhibitions so far.

In my prints and digital art, colour is the main medium. There is usually no figurative element – just basic abstract forms. A major source of inspiration is science, in the form of the spectra of the base elements (hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen etc.).