Great art can come from unexpected places – Van Gogh painted the hands of the peasants, Degas took his inspiration from the daily lives of the French. For Fatma Lootah, inspiration comes from the realities of Emirati life. Through her paintings, she dives deep into her country, accumulating a rich portfolio of events that tend to stick in the viewers’ minds, despite their busy lives.
She portrays past and present faces and forms, images reflected through the painter’s deft brush strokes. Though she lives in Italy, far from home in terms of culture and geography, her paintings make it clear that some part of her still resides in UAE.
She summarizes stories that cross from sadness to joy and everything in between just by painting a face. But her passion is painting children, using their innocence to capture reality with a bright flair of colour.
Her paintings have a diversity of characters and styles, whether abstract, portrait or more traditionally Emirati, featuring earth and orange colours.
But the colours aren’t the only thing that takes her paintings back home – she frequently uses local themes in her work, including women, deserts, horses and camels.
She says that art stays in the human soul forever, and wherever she goes and no matter how far she travels, she will not stop creating those characters that bring us all back to UAE.
