080

b. Kedah, 1948
Sharifah Fatimah Syed Zubir, Dato’
Untitled
undated
oil on canvas
122 x 122cm
Provenance
Private collection, Penang.
Estimate
RM 28,000 – 40,000
Price Realised
RM 30,800

The lighter blues seem as if they are meant to spread out abstract thoughts and feelings to the furthest edges, to simmer in the cold and warm hues, and to dry. The interplay of coloured shapes, linked and unlinked, geometric and organic, is concentrated in the central area, but is not confined to the centre. The mood it evokes is one of calm and quiet and is rather comforting as a whole. The feeling is one of a wide expanse of emptiness as well as a melding of elements. The whole painting ‘being’ has become a spiritual journey. It is couched in her Mindscape series, done in the early half of the 1990s.

Sharifah Fatimah has fashioned a unique brand of abstract art imbued with strong spiritual values, symbolisms and local colours. She graduated from MARA Institute of Technology in 1971 with the Best Student Award. Her first solo followed in 1972 at the Alpha Gallery in Singapore. She graduated with First Class Honours for her BFA at Reading University, England in 1976. She was awarded the JDR III Fund Fellowship to do her Masters at the Pratt Institute, New York from 1976 to 1978. Her awards include the Minor Award, Malaysian Landscapes (1972), the Major Award, Salon Malaysia (1979), and the Minor Award in the Young Contemporary Artist in 1981. She was a curator at the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur from 1982 to 1989, before turning a fulltime artist in 1990.