Dubai
The artist
Studio study · artwork in context
Nadia Swidan is a Dubai-based artist painting large-scale originals in acrylic with heavy impasto.
I paint large, in acrylic laid on thick, so the surface has bumps and grooves you could run a hand over. Up close it's chaos: layers, splashes, drips, roses sitting above the surface. From across the room it goes quiet and holds still. The same painting is different in the morning and by lamplight, different from the sofa and from the doorway. That's the point. It should be enjoyed over and over.
Up close it's chaos. From across the room it goes quiet and holds still.
The work is built with fingers, brushes, sponges, whatever gives me the texture I'm after. My last painting has three older paintings underneath it. If anyone ever peels it back, they'll find them all.
The tutu keeps coming back because it's ballet: feeling expressed through movement, discipline and lightness in the same shape. Feminine, but powerful. These paintings live well in bedrooms and dressing rooms, in a woman's workspace, in the kind of restaurant you dress up for.
The first one started as a painting I'd turned to the wall years earlier. It kept bothering me until the bothering got too much, so I finished it, and I haven't stopped since. I live and work in Dubai. Every painting comes straight from my studio: signed, with its certificate, and delivered by hand in Dubai.
The practice
- Based
- Dubai, United Arab Emirates
- Medium
- Acrylic on canvas, heavy impasto — built with fingers, brushes and sponges
- Typical scale
- 100 × 120 cm
- Editions
- None — every painting is an original, one of one