Metamorphosis, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 18 ins, 2001

S A D R A D E E N

Sadradeen was born in 1963 in Kirkuk, Iraq, into a Kurdish family. He completed his degree in 1986 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad, and has shown his work in group exhibitions in Arbil, The Netherlands, Brussels and Amman and he has had solo exhibitions in Amman (1999) and in the USA (2001, 2002, 2003, 2004). He was forced to leave his country in the late 1990s and first went to Jordan. Then later with his family he emigrated to America, settling there in 2000.

“The search for a paradies that has disappeared, the reflections on the simple and invisible things of this world, the depth of the substance of creatures, and a penetration into the profundity of the human spirit . . . this is my particular world. My paintings are expressions full of modernity; they are also childish dreams in colour, expressive of the sweet passing of the beauty, the symbols and the myths of old civilisation. The creatures of my work are mythical poems illuminated by the charm of my country which comes from a distant past – part of it still found in nature, the other part already perished. It is pure, personal discovery." Sadradeen

Sadradeen in his studio

Photo: Shamsaldeen Ameen

Mythology, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 40 ins, 2002