Come aboard. Let me show you my source of inspiration! It's the coolest boat on the canal!
I met Ian, my boyfriend, on the canal. I love you! And I spent a lot of time on his boat and I did a whole new series of paintings, and he just brought a whole new wave of inspiration to my life.
It had its own pace. The time is different. Everything is slower. There's no rush on the canal. You have this contrast of the canal life and the city life. All these different dimensions, all side-by-side. People, they're running, and there's cyclists, and people are just walking - they all have their own little world and they all kind of meet, you know. The canal brings them all together. It's very strange and it's lovely.
This is one of my favourite works. I usually work with just putting lots of lines on the surface that I'm working on, and then find images in there, knowing that, OK, I want something which is related to the canal, so obviously I want boats, I want bridges, I want the canal, but the little lines indicate where those things are going to be. Then later, you try to interpret it - what does that mean? And it can have all kinds of reasons, but it's never clear because it's done from subconscious and a sudden burst of idea, like, "Oh, yeah, I'll do that." And I just usually go along with it.
Inspiration can come from everywhere. I've been influenced by everybody - all the classical, Renaissance and religious paintings. At the moment, I really like the Pre-Raphaelite paintings. They seem to really attract my attention. I can stare at them for a long while. Looking at paintings and studying them can really help in understanding how artists work. I can find traces of inspiration connected to all kinds of masterpieces in my work.
Video summary
Maryam Hashemi boards her barge on the canal and shares how life on the water brought a whole new wave of inspiration.
There are scenes of her boyfriend playing music on the barge interspersed with light effects similar to her richly coloured paintings.
The canal is her source of inspiration and living on the boat brings together two worlds: canal life and city life.
She shows how her ideas emerge from the subconscious and are influenced by classical and Renaissance, religious and Pre-Raphaelite art movements.
From a BBC series Making Art Work which explores the creations of six UK-based leading artists.
Teacher Notes
Students could take photographs of locations they you know well, it might be where they live, their journey to school or somewhere else.
Ask them to find a traditional historical artwork that may have some similarity to their photograph and get them to make a collage of the artworks, combining the two places.
These clips will be relevant for teaching Art and Design at GCSE/KS4 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and National 4/5 or Higher in Scotland.
The topics discussed will support OCR, Edexcel, AQA, WJEC GCSE in England and Wales, CCEA GCSE in Northern Ireland and SQA National 4/5 and Higher in Scotland.
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