Mohammed Yasin Saddique
F
or a self-taught painter just 30 years of age, Mohammed Yasin Saddique has generated an impressive body of artwork that includes portraits, nudes, landscapes, and cityscapes. Most of Saddique's portraits are colorful, playful interpretations that often invoke the cubist tradition. Bold black lines demarcate both sections of his painting and sections of his subjects, which suggest both depth and texture. His subjects emerge from the canvas as colorful patchwork quilts or paper mache composites.
Saddique's portraits are arguably his most evocative works. To the sides of his subject's head, Saddique will often include cross-sections of his model's profile. Here, Saddique experiments with anthropomorphic shapes. Some viewers, for example, might discern an elephant's face and trunk flanking Nadia's face in his portrait of the same name. Interestingly—perhaps even tellingly—Saddique's own portrait and that of his wife are strikingly different than his other portraits. The former are virtually black-and-white compositions. The faces of Saddique and his wife resemble white mannequin heads faintly tinged by yellows and reds. They are as works in progress or model faces to be molded sometime later into something new.
Saddique's works can be found in private collections in various European countries, the United States, England, India, and Pakistan. Saddique lives and works in London and Pakistan.
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resenting reductionist essentials with a dash of humor, Norweigan artist Ellen Marlen Hamre reveals both the essence of her art and her philosophy of life: where there is order, there is simplicity; where there is simplicity, there is joy. Emphasizing freshness and spontaneity over detail, Hamre clearly uses line, color, and motif as principal means of expression, but it is her sprightly characters that steal the show. Cartoon-ishly stylized and utterly original, topsy-turvy female figures cocooned in tube-like dresses spring from unexpected angles, peek coyly around corners, but more often than not assert themselves front and center as the life of the painting. Exuding optimism and palpable joy, fiery hues of hair burst from their heads like wild crowns, sweep implausibly to the side, or lift impossibly skyward in total defiance of gravity.
Characterized by these signature figures and rectilinear patterns which form the basic structure of her compositions, Hamre gives the impression that each painting is a fragment of a larger work, a continuing story. Working primarily in acrylic but also in watercolor, Hamre infuses basic forms with rhythm and personality, using bold color as well as vertical and horizontal lines to support, accent and frame these vibrant projections of her own enthusiasm.
Ellen Marlen Hamre