Saira Jamieson
Born in London, to Pakistani parents, Saira was raised in a household of both immense cultural pride as well as deep religiosity. She found escapism through painting and drawing, creating otherworldly terrains of symbolism. Her diarised sketches became a secret language, one her parents couldn’t decipher, one they didn’t approve of.
Upon discovering long-lost diaries, Saira’s new body of work was born. Love Letters to Old Scars, an attempt to communicate with her former self.
She says, “At the end of the final journal, a trigger spiralled through my core as I uncovered an extract, surreptitiously hidden between glued pages. The text described a devastating moment of lost hope, a realisation that the freedom I was so desperately craving, was futile. I replied, on the final blank page, with a love letter. Declaring gratitude for gathering the strength to swim upstream to a life worth living, for fighting to flourish from the darkest depths. A final promise to our daughter; she would know our history, she would understand that freedom should not be a fight - or a gift - but a basic human right.”
Painting in a “Fauvist” style, with golden yellows, incandescent greens, thick impasto, and finger strokes, this series moves away from her normally controlled painting technique in favour of blunt expression.
Sibyls
The story of entrapment and fighting for freedom has long had its place in the symbolic history of women. Saira says, “The Lady of Shalott, a poem by Alfred Tennyson and corresponding namesake paintings by William Hunt and John Waterhouse, I hold close to my heart. As she weaves and weaves, The Lady of Shalott is able to see her destiny in a magical mirror. Eventually, she escapes but, bound by a traditional curse, her liberation leads to her death.”
About her work, Saira writes, “The mirror has long been used as an allegory of seeking truth in the retrospective. As such, my painting is very much a love letter to The Lady of Shalott - to all the women that came before me - and after me - both in fiction and in life. To those that lived to tell their tale, I honour your courage. To those who have perished, I promise to honour your scars.”
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