Mastery over colours, light

A bold splash of colours light up her cityscapes of the Arab world. She explains her affinity for striking colours thus: "I'm only depicting the strong and potent colours I see around me. Unlike back home in England, the hues here keep changing through the day. The colours here are somehow different, maybe because we view life here through a haze."

The "haze" seems to have done nothing to blur the vision of artist Deborah Creed, who recently exhibited 60 of her paintings at the British Ambassador's residence in Abu Dhabi. For her impressions of the "colour" and "heat" in the Arab world seem to be very distinctly represented in bright colours such as pinks, oranges, deep yellow and ochre.

It's her mastery over colours which incidentally caught the eye of the famous colourist Patrick Heron when she was at art school prompting him to take her on as a protegee.

But, Creed is not just marrying colours in the most perfect way, she also tries to project the "light reflections on the man-made structures, the heat and the sensations as much as the object itself"in her work.

In her words: "Nothing is obvious in my work. I want people to really look at things with a fresh eye, take notice of the colours I've used and the reality of life here."

For example, in one favourite work, "Mosque with date palms", this self-confessed colourist blends a vivid orange and yellow to depict the changing colours of the sand and the sun. It's her creative colours which motivated Elizabeth Nixon, the wife of Patrick Nixon, the British ambassador to the UAE, to hold an exhibition of her works at her residence.

"Indeed, this is the first time I'm exhibiting an artist's work in my house," she admits. It was two years ago that she spotted Creed's "great talent" and saw a chance to promote British artists in the Emirates and also help the Future Centre, a school for children with special needs, by passing on a part of the sale proceeds from the art show to the Centre.

Says Nixon about Creed: "What I like about her work is the way she uses her colours. She brings out the atmosphere of places like the souks here with her apt choice of colours."

This is not Creed's first exhibition. Educated at the Canterbury College of Art in England, she has exhibited before in Cyprus, England and in Oman. But her current works, which include landscapes, piquant portraits of Arab women and colourful abstracts naturally reflect her time, the colour and the rhythms here.

"My paintings are a celebration of the tremendous variety of trees in the desert, the beautiful rhythms here, the character of the old buildings and the new reflections of a concrete city," Creed said. Her mediums are usually oils, gouash and mixed media.

Deborah Creed is also using her creativity in making a collection of hand-painted "shailas" for an Abu Dhabi-based Paris haute couture fashion house called "Arabesque." More Arab cityscapes and more exhibitions are around the corner for Creed. She seems like a restless artist always on the move. Trying to still the hands of time and make people pause ... to enjoy the colours of life.