Painting in oil with a palette knife, Anjum Saeed tames the bold strokes of her inner turmoil within the expansive territory of the 2-dimnesional painterly plane. Using pigment to expose a relationship between her personal strife and the conflict of her politically tumultuous South Asian homeland, Saeed’s brash, explosive abstractions vibrate with the intensity of a history that goes back centuries and with the indomitable spirit of human perseverance. Generously applying paint to canvas, Saeed scratches and manipulates her surface, using the cut of her palette knife to ‘keep the pigments fresh and alive,’ within a spontaneous and active creative process. Her work is a visual defense against stasis, a testament to the permanence of metaphysical flight, fluidity and transfiguration.
In addition to obtaining her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan, and the Central Institute of Arts and Crafts in Karachi, where she completed the qualification, Anjum Saeed has studied at the School of Visual Arts and Parsons School of Design in New York City.