Passion and Obsession: Isadora Malik

Paintings and drawings by Isadora Malik

Open Monday to saturday 10:00 – 16:30

Passion and obsession was given as a title for one of my A-level art sketchbooks and the idea has stuck with me ever since. I naively thought I had finished with it when I handed in my coursework but approximately 13 years later I began to continue what I started as a teenager.

 I was desperate to go to university where I would have the freedom to come up with and follow whatever whim I fancied. I was passionate about making art and excited by the possibilities. I had, in my immaturity, thought that when I left school I would be ‘free’. But I found I wanted the boundaries back, a safe space to develop and push its limits. Freedom to do whatever you want at that age felt very trapping. It was like falling off the end of the world. What was the point. I felt for a long time that I had lost my Passion. Passion comes from living and the desire to do something not from the empty void on blank studio walls.

Years later this old theme and idea once again began to obsess me and I started looking at how to convey passion and movement in pictures. Around this time my sister was doing a lot of areal hoop, pole and silk dancing. The power and precision in the moves she made were strong, passionate, purposeful and beautiful. I couldn’t stop drawing her. The series of work I created around this title features her movements coupled with movement found in nature and the movement I could create on the page. I used a range of media including ink, paint and collage. Put simply I have obsessively tried to capture passion.

https://iamisadoramalik.com/