----- INTRODUCTION

--------------------------- * Cape Reinga *

----- Region of the Heart

---------- My art practice this year has centred around the landscape and the imagination . I have chosen " Cape Reinga " as a subject because I have felt more inspiration from working in that place than anywhere else . For me , it represents a real sense of natural beauty . and has became a source of interplay between my emotions , senses ,intellect and imagination .

When I was at Cape Reinga I felt myself to be in contact with spiritual . It was a feeling which captured me without any conscious intention on my part , I responded to it spontaneously .

I painted the first artwork without any studies, huge as feeling . It seemed very solemn and special .It is painted close to the realism style but intertwined with all the emotions in my psyche . It is the origin of my deep emotion and because of that I give it a title " Origin " .

After this I worked very hard week after week using what I call " vanishing colour " style which makes me feel submerged within the colour . But I stopped suddenly .

This style is not enough to explain my feeling . It is a style which comes out of realism rather than imagination .

My consciousness towards the place is different - as if my spirit is disembodied . It is not easy to make the emotion tangible without making a connection between colour and movement to express the spiritual .

- I pause for meditation about my art work .

- I try to find Cape Reinga in it .

- I haven't found it .

Maybe the light here in New Zealand has positive qualities similar to the sun in United Arab Emirates where I lived most of my art life . But the colour are too different , between here and there . In U .A .E there are less colour due to the desert climate , with few greens . here in N Z there are too many colours , nearer to the imagination than to reality .

Return ..... to the " Origin " , and a long state of contemplation again .

This contemplative state takes a few days only .

Beginning again , I try another practical style , painting colour and movement in anew way which brings a new dimension of spiritual imagination and emotional consideration into the relationship with the place and the space around it .

Sudden jump from all those considerations , taking up my special concept of ....

The spirit disembodied , emanating from the land and pushing into the innermost sky .

My mind is at rest .

I now know the meaning of my unseen mystical feeling . It seems I have arrived at a new stage in my art work , taking up the geometric form and its content and exploring the relationship with the pure colour space surrounding it within the painting itself .

The paintings translate my senses and feelings experienced when I visited that place in the far North .

All the paintings have a title which I hope will help convey some of these feeling to the viewers .

--------------------------------------------- Ihsan Al Khateeb

---------------------------------------------------------- PGDiploma 2000