Soraya Sherif Smithson is an artist based in Norfolk who makes paintings and sculptures using precious metal leaf and lacquer technique. She exhibits nationally and internationally. Her work is in public, corporate and private collections. She works from her studio in King's Lynn.
This work was developed from my long term interest in the decorative style of Islamic and other Eastern arts, where the function of the imagery is principally to delight the senses and invoke a contemplative state of mind rather than to relay a pictorial narrative. Certainly narrative is implied by this work, but any story present remains elusive, as if in a dream or a trance, just as the gilt decoration of 14th century paintings by Giotto or Simone Martini aims to elevate the spirit, not just illustrate a biblical tale.
The visual and intellectual delight and creative ingenuity of the Rococo and Indian Mughal miniatures are other influences. The formal inspiration for this work is drawn from the great gilded treasures created in the ancient and mediaeval worlds. These range from Scythian nomads' belt buckles to the lavish artefacts of Byzantine and Carolingian courts and beyond. The gilded surfaces of Russian and Greek icons and the gold encrusted architecture of Asia from Istanbul to Kyoto also inspire my palette. The craft processes that I employ, water-gilding and lacquer work, are the same as those used for millennia by the masters of these traditions.
I have also been struck by how the visual strategies developed by European Baroque and Rococo artists to create an illusion of depth and reality were understood by later designers such as Fabergé, who created dazzlingly complex objects that are as much about space as they are about surface.
For more information on Soraya and her work please visit her website.