Salma Arastu
The Best of the Best Juried Art Exhibition, 2017
Salma Arastu
Exhibiting Artist
Pepco Edison Place Gallery
702 8th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20068
August 11 - 30, 2017
Exhibiting Artist
Pepco Edison Place Gallery
702 8th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20068
August 11 - 30, 2017
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Bio
Painter, poet, sculptor, Berkeley based Salma Arastu, a native of India's Rajasthan, has been creating and exhibiting her paintings internationally since the 1970s and her art works, whether paintings, sculptures or poetry speak of human universality. Her art form and techniques are greatly inter-woven with Arabic Calligraphy, Miniature Arts and Folk patterns, her major influences through her travels. Born into the Hindu tradition in her native India, and embracing Islam later on, she has enjoyed the beauty of these two distinctive traditions first hand. At birth, she was given the life-defining challenge of a left hand without fingers.
As a visual artist she has almost 40 solo shows to her credit, won several awards including East Bay Community’s fund for artists in 2012 and 2014, City of Berkeley’s Individual Artist grant award in 2014, 2015 and 2016. Her three works are in public places and five books published with her poems and paintings. |
Artist Statement
"Celebration of Calligraphy is a new series of paintings to enlighten and awaken the spiritual connection of universal humanity through lyrical and fluid imagery of Arabic Calligraphy and Islamic patterns. I find myself yearning to find infinite possibilities of the lyrical line itself on large canvases. I just want to plunge myself into the pleasure of contemplating the abstract flow of the swelling lines, and form compositions of lines and fields within given space and enjoy the celebration of calligraphy through lyrical visions. I paint to express the prayers of my heart and intend for the energy of the calligraphy, powered by the positive messages from the texts, to reveal the joy and celebration that I experience while creating them. Each verse I portray gives me strength and peace, and I hope instill these feelings in my viewers."
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