Alia Al Wahab

Artist profile

I was six years old when I drew Ishtar. I didn't know then that I would spend the rest of my life painting what I remember of Baghdad. I grew up in a family that had little use for artists, so drawing became the room I went to when I wanted to be alone. At eighteen I found a teacher in Ismael Al Shaikhly. Not long after, I was studying economics because that was what was expected of me, and painting at night because that was what I was. Since then I have lived in Iraq, England, Lebanon, Canada, and now Houston. Distance never loosened my hold on home; it tightened it. There were years when certain things could not be said out loud, and in those years the canvas said them for me. People ask what my style is. I don't have one. Each subject arrives with its own weather - its own color, its own pace - and I follow it. That isn't indecision. It's honesty. Nearly sixty years after that first exhibition in Baghdad, I am still working. The brush is still the clearest voice I have.