By Time 2007

By Time is a 2-piece artwork prepared for my year 2 assessment in 2007 during my intake in Lasalle.

What moved me to create this artwork was the movement of time. Time flew very fast that you might not know when is your turn to go. 

The arabic words ,"وَاُلْعَصْرِ" , means By Time. There is a verse in the Muslim Qur'an which goes in depth of the meaning.  The background is made up of the mechanisms of a watch. But it is ironic that I drew a human facial feature in this as it is actually prohibited to create or  make up human form but I couldn't help but love drawing portraits. Adding my grandma's face in it with this meaning is really sad but I needed a portrait of an elderly to blend well in this painting but she hated it coz I drew her portrait not wearing her hijab. Reason why is because I wanted to display the skin texture.

By Time
Oil on Canvas
24" x 48" x 2pcs
2007

This painting is one of my favourite portraits that I have ever painted. The thing about oil painting is that it takes time to dry for another layer to be painted over but it is definitely smoother in terms of blending.

One of the difficulties that I encountered was painting the mechanisms and not the portrait. Personally i hate drawing anything with machines like hard cold objects and straight lines. Just too stiff for me and there is no sense of "life" in it.

I  was actually surprised that I could tackle portraiture better than I previously did for my other paintings maybe on of the reasons is because of the medium used.

Thanks for reading!

- kiki.