How can I paint emotions, which create a visceral feeling of discomfort and confusion in the viewer? How do I dissect identity; in myself and those around me? Can the deformed self ever return to its primal version? I use color and its absence to depict the cycle of dread and its emotional turmoil. The unsettling and disturbing figures explore ideas of waning morality, personhood, and lack of innocence. I move back and forth between painting Alla prima portraits during emotional spirals in one day or meticulously planning my work and spending weeks to months on it. I move back and forth between realism and expressionism to challenge and build my technical skills while also making work that evokes scenery from my imagination and dreams. I want the viewer to experience a deep innate feeling of nostalgia or emotion deep within their psyche which connects us both together.

Areesha Ahmed is a Bethlehem-based painter who has been developing her skills in oil painting for the past several years. She is currently working towards a minor in Fine Arts at Lehigh University, and has been making art since an infant. She lived in Gujrat, Pakistan until the age of 9, then moved to Nutley, NJ where she took art classes all 4 years of high school. Areesha’s charcoal work was exhibited in the SOPAC gallery her sophomore year, but then she went on to explore newer mediums and methods, developing a keen interest in oil painting. Her main influences are the black paintings by Goya, Picasso’s earlier works such as “The Young Painter,” and the art movements of expressionism and Dadaism.