A Baghdad Artist - Vian Sora

Prophecy - a prediction of the future, made under divine inspiration; an inspired message or prediction transmitted orally or in writing.

Seeking the future, longing for the past, focusing upon the divine and finding hope from messages we encounter, but often cannot decipher. The Arabic script, with its natural forms and shapes, provides a door between divinity and humanity; translating the spiritual into recognizable messages. Translating the messages, yearning to know the prophecy that affects each of our lives, is a lifelong quest filled with frustration, anticipation and often grace.

Vision

Fear

Eternal

Prophecy

Passageways

Dessert

Legends of Baghdad

Baghdad, moments in time, mystical, mythical, lost but never forgotten. Captured beauty, confined within, seeking to break from tragedy, to be revealed again.

Abbassid Door

Bonds

Calligraphy Tablet

Calling

Flowing, Journey

Moments

Moments, Past

Mystical

Night Over the River

Reflections

Resilience

Spirit of a Legend

Transformations

Harmony

Istanbul - the city straddling two continents, tenuously holding a place as a bridge between East and West. Dripping with history, the buildings display the drastic contrast between the new world and the old, gripping unto the past and hoping for a future. Similar ancient spirits exist here as in Baghdad, but they are contrasted by a hyper mega city undergoing modern reclamation and bustling with untold possibilities. From the past to the present, Istanbul is static, yet dynamic, suspended with tension.

Song of the Tigris

Ishtaria

Gates of Beyoglu

Hagia Sophia

Legends

Tugra

Recitation

Spiritual

Mesopotamia - The ancient land between two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, where Iraq was born. Taking its soul and spirit from the foundations of history, the beginnings of culture and establishment of civilization. Within the soil, ruins of antiquity continue to breath, seeking life and remembrance of a time past but never to be lost.

Arabian Women

Call to Prayer

Ancient Horizons

The Womb

The Golden March

Passages

Ishtar

Old Babylon

Wall of Nimrud

Strings of Life

Wave of Light

City of Lagash

Princess of Ur

Tablets

Given by God

Innana

Amaranthine City

Returning

Doors of Patience

Zubayda

Abstract and images - placing emotions and representations, one of inward views and the other from perspective, into color within context and shapes. Describing passion through hues, showing love and simplicity, hatred and complexity all within the canvas. Lines of sharp edges depicting contrast found in life to blended clouds displaying the mixture of existence. Expressive and vibrant, yet confronted by painful moments, the delicate balance within Iraq, breathing then calamity, captured momentarily. Seeking moments of normality, mixed and jaded by reality, repressing a jaundiced view. And, similar to abstraction, the possibilities endless.

Composition II

Burning Impulse

Dichotomy

Philosophy of the Code

Rumination

Words of Beauty

Poetic

Signs

Horses - the indomitable beasts from ancient times, carrying legends on their backs, bringing revolutions with their gallop. All the while, poised, elegant, strong with an effusive personality. Free, as they run through time and space, never looking back, one with history. Ever so attractive, horses embody the divinely inspired surrounding all of humanity.

Fertility

Sands of Passion

Pendulum of Desires

Indomitable

Dancing Tale

Pugnacious

Wild, Free

Spiriting One

Women are constantly challenged in this new Iraq. Awaiting their moment of peace, struggling to raise children while nurturing a family, maintaining a pulse within a war torn country, all of this and more strains the essence of feminity, quells the aspirations for civil rights and leaves hope suspended. And in this land, life continues against the greatest of odds. Simply, these paintings delicately touch the image of women within a frontier of unknown limits and unknown ends.