Santiago’s Andalusia by Nasha Maryam
Explore Mondoir Studio
Medium: Acrylics on wooden board
Dimensions: 30 x 40 cm
Year: 2023
Price: $500.00 USD
Status: available
Santiago’s Andalusia ~ inspired by Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist ~ As you can see the base layer is done using gold leaf and yet it hardly shows in the final layer of painting except in the arched doorway where it leads to finding magic and road to your calling. Our insides are precious and shiny like gold .. and life happens .. and sometimes we need to polish to see our worth. Our struggles, perseverance, determination, hope and even bare existence is the threshold of forming the life worth living. Like Santiago the alchemy of life is not just found, it is discovered traversing new roads and doors. Is that not how we discover our calling in life? Artist: Nasha Maryam
Why collect this work?
Nested pointed arches reduce architecture to a sequence of thresholds, while the tiny suspended lantern makes orientation appear possible but distant within the expansive gold-coloured field.
- Maryam’s profile connects her painting to memories of the Arabian Peninsula and to reflection. Here, those concerns are concentrated in an architectural motif rather than a broad landscape; the reference to Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist is the artist’s stated framing.
- In the photograph, the pale central arch nearly fills the board and encloses a smaller orange opening at the lower edge. This sharp difference in scale turns passage into a staged progression rather than an immediate destination.
- The catalogue records acrylic on wooden board, 30 by 40 cm, made in 2023. Acrylic permits the sharply bounded dark surround and warm tonal layering seen here; the artist reports that gold leaf lies beneath parts of the painted image.
- For a collection examining literary adaptation, thresholds, or spiritual allegory, the painting shows how a narrative of searching can be conveyed through proportion, enclosure, and the separation between lantern and doorway.
About the Artist
Nasha Maryam
Nasha Maryam is an artist on Mondoir Studio. Artistic discipline: painting. Based in Sharjah, AE.
Nationality: Indian
My signature art styles are seascapes and desertscape paintings. It is because I find in the desert the moments to pause, slow down and introspect.
