From Streets To Stage, Catch Painter Karimah Hassan Mix Spontaneity With Structure

Painter Karimah Hassan is filling the city with curious creatures, inspired by performers, strangers and communities of people she finds herself surrounded by. Working from wall to canvas, Karimah’s recognisable style of thick luscious paint creates playful combinations of bright lines atop dark backgrounds, inspiring a sense of creative frivolity.

Often painting “friends and real-life inspirations” such as dancers, writer, musicians and performers, Karimah will often work insitu, to portray her subjects whilst they are actively engaged in their own creative outlet. By being in the moment with the performer, Karimah explains how she’ll “try and capture the spirit of the (person)... and then beyond that, as a message, I always reference the community and/or group that the subject is representing” which Karimah reflects upon as being “way larger than I am”. This sense of awareness for the people Karimah chooses to paint and how she represents them adds layers of context visible within her creations. A large element of Karimah’s work is based on spontaneity and intuition, tightly wound together by technique and skill which can be seen in her geometric forms and compositions.

““I actually never know what I’m going to paint until the brush hits the paper and even then, I’m discovering as I go along. Part of the process for me is stumbling across moments in the composition where I find something intuitive that I know needs to be kept and then to carry on but finishing before it feels too polished and clean.””

This incomplete nature of Karimah’s paintings is something which adds complexity to her paintings – a story never being fully told, allowing the audience to fill in the gaps, “I like my pieces to still have a raw gritty element to them”.

Found in Karimah’s street art is a family of awkwardly positioned human forms, figures stumbling down edges of walls and little creatures crawling across brick. Again, Karimah’s creative process is one which allows for intuition to take reign. “I leave chunks in the design that are unplanned so that I can freestyle on the spot.” It is through these moments that emotion and movement find their way into Karimah’s work, resulting in an overall atmosphere which is daunting and eerie whilst being alive and magical. “The focus is about generating an overarching impression by using a few key bold geometric lines that give the composition weight and rhythm, the rest of the marks then add depth and balance to the image.” This style results in paintings that have a conscious and careful harmony feeling both complete and curious at the same time.

Karimah is currently working on a year long series called ‘Strangers in My Blood’, where she paints a person every day of the year, to be presented in 2021. You can track the progress of this project on the Instagram page @strangersyearbook. Or keep up to date with work on her personal page @karimahhassan