Labour of Love : Meaning of a Song Painting

Shumaiya Khan is an artist, writer, and creative. Born 1990, in Bradford, West Yorkshire to a British Bengali family, before moving to London to pursue higher education where she resides to this day. Khan comes from a design-led background, earning her BA Hons in Design from Goldsmiths, University of London. Although she has always painted, she only fully resumed her art practice in April of 2020. Khan is self-taught and her work has always had an element of experimentation with textures and motion within an abstract framework built to engage emotion within her audience. Within her earlier critical theory design work, this has translated into recording statistics in visually fluid, quantifiable, and measurable ways, via the use of ink, ceramics, and plants. Between 2010 to 2019, Khan’s sole focus was her creative & art direction roles within fashion, homeware, and beauty. Khan produces contemporary abstract expressionist pieces via the use of acrylic, charcoal, chalk, and poetry across canvas and paper. At times, especially with her larger-scale abstract pieces, pigment is worked and layered into pieces over a series of days or weeks. Different viscosities of pigment are considered, adding dimension and rich texture into the vast worlds, solar systems, and oceans she creates. In juxtaposition to her full-colour works, Khan produces fast-paced, raw canvas and paper pieces. Brush strokes and charcoal lines are created at different paces, some with more initially thought-through intention than others. Khan sees the physicality’s of her visual painting language working towards an ever evolving image in her mind. Khan’s work is based in emotional and metaphysical storytelling. Her practice explores juxtapositions around dynamic behaviours in the sphere of; the relationship with ourselves, feminine expression & sensuality, societal interaction, morality, innate faith & spirituality. Khan often calls upon the viewers to look inside themselves and ask what they feel. She has stated previously that she is compelled to create, being both a meditative and explorative practice for her. / Featured in 107 Female Artists You Need To Know in 2023, Curated by Lucy Donovan, / The SundayTimes / The Spaces Magazine