The Colors of Mayada

Mayada’s latest work forms the basis of our conversation about the role colors play in her artistic life. I’ve known Mayada Reehan for a long time. Her artistic curriculum vitae is impressive. While teaching a workshop in 2014, I portrayed her in Whispers of Oman, which was published the following year.

(click on thumbnail to enlarge pictures)

For Mayada, colors are food for the soul of every artist. “Without them, life would look like a withered orchard flower,” she beautifully notes.

“I use oil and acrylic paint in my works. Oil paints are the best for me because they do not dry quickly and that gives me comfort when using them. As for acrylic paint, using it is a bit difficult because the paint dries quickly. So if I were to use them for a realistic subject it would be more difficult because they don’t give me enough time to combine the colors. As I also have  experience in extracting colors from any subject, image or material, even when it dries and I want to add some details, I can’t extract the same color that I added earlier in the painting. This is a problem that many artists face, especially beginners in drawing. For me, this is one of the reasons why I don’t use acrylic paint for certain art subjects.”

When I ask Mayada if there is a color that is not easy to work with, she starts talking about the fact that red is one of the colors that can influence the artwork. And then she explains: “The color red consists of two types, one type that we use to give us pink and violet shades when we mix it with blue. And another type that gives us brown tones if we mix it with blue or green. So, we must make sure that we get these two types of red so that it does not pose any problem for us when mixing colors.”

Silence and then….

”Purple is my favourite color as it is cheerful and makes the soul happy. I LOVE purple, she says laughing.

Copyr. pictures courtesy Mayada Reehan