The link between ancestral heritage and the land is a key component of Assyrian art and culture. The land has preserved us and it continues to connect us to our roots. The Unadorned series gives life to landscape art by using satellite photography of Assyrian lands (fig. 1-6).

Instead of a literal depiction of mountains, valleys and streams, this series distills ancient Assyrian art to line, shape, texture and color as the foundation for pictorial landscape imagery. It searches for novel, intriguing compositions from a bird’s-eye view. Images of the land are sown with compositional elements taken from ancient Assyrian reliefs and reimagined as aerial landscapes, filled with colors and shapes that are familiar, yet new. The title of each piece refers to the types of permanent and temporary inhabitants who have lived in these lands over time.

Mixed media on watercolor paper