Gouache & acrylic on board
A4
This painting is inspired by the calligraphy of the Pashto couplet (known as "landay"):
Āsmān puh stōrō
Ao njelay puh khālōnō
Shāista da
Translation:
As the sky with stars,
So the girl is beautiful with tattoos.
A tawny owl flies away above the subject. In traditional Pashtun culture of Afghanistan and the Northwest Frontier, women are adorned with tribal facial tattoos - small dots - when they become teenagers. Whilst these tattoos partly serve as beauty spots, they also identify the woman's tribe - much as clan tartans do in Scottish highland culture. The dots on this woman's face (3 on the temple; 1 between the eyes; 1 on the chin) identify her as a member of the Hotak tribe - one of the most famous members of which was the Taliban's first leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar.
Gouache & acrylic on board
A4
This painting is inspired by the calligraphy of the Pashto couplet (known as "landay"):
Āsmān puh stōrō
Ao njelay puh khālōnō
Shāista da
Translation:
As the sky with stars,
So the girl is beautiful with tattoos.
A tawny owl flies away above the subject. In traditional Pashtun culture of Afghanistan and the Northwest Frontier, women are adorned with tribal facial tattoos - small dots - when they become teenagers. Whilst these tattoos partly serve as beauty spots, they also identify the woman's tribe - much as clan tartans do in Scottish highland culture. The dots on this woman's face (3 on the temple; 1 between the eyes; 1 on the chin) identify her as a member of the Hotak tribe - one of the most famous members of which was the Taliban's first leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar.
