CONTEMPORARY FINE ART PRACTITIONER BASED IN LONDON
Maha’s practice centres on painting as a material and conceptual language. Particularly interested in the process of physical negotiation of paint and how these processes can generate meaning beyond representation, her current work explores how traditional oil painting can engage with contemporary questions surrounding biological decline and the future of the human mortality.
Hands record the visible passage of time through ageing, injury, labour, adaptation, and repair. In her recent projects hands have become central to her work. Her compositions combine various poses whilst focussing on the human hand as both subject and a speculative proposition. Taking hands beyond their anatomical presence, she transforms these into a site allowing broader questions to emerge using moving images, sculpture and installation work.
While material exploration refines her visual language, her practice is driven by a critical, open-ended approach that is committed to the conceptual enquiry, expanding painting beyond its visual appeal to create the emotional resonance with such process studies, micro research and outcomes. Developing from an archive of photographs and observational sketches, Maha’s oil paintings are executed with slow deliberate mark making, layering, scraping, glazing and repeated over-painting. Drawing is fundamental in her compositional, tonal and spatial decisions. She combines this observational drawing skill with expressive but gentle, considered layering of translucent washes to create depth and drama that mirror the speculative space.
Some of her previous projects include exploration of cultural stereotypes that included family and animal portraiture, material hedonism, and abstract responses to her digitally translated paintings.
Maha lives in and works from London. Before becoming a full-time artist in 2019, she built a successful professional career outside the arts in consultancy and finance. That experience instilled discipline, analytical thinking, and resilience, qualities that continues to shape her artistic practice. Recently completed the Graduate Diploma in Fine Art at the RCA with a high score of distinction, Maha has previously trained formally in advanced painting at Central Saint Martins, University of London and has exhibited in several open calls and gallery exhibitions across London.
EDUCATION
Graduate Diploma, Royal College of Art London - Painting 2026 (Distinction)
8 years of advanced painting at Central Saint Martins, University of Arts, London - 2017 -2025
Fine Art Diploma at City-Lit London 2015
Financial Modelling Diploma, London School of Business and Finance, London
Chartered Accountancy – Professional Masters qualification in Finance, Economics and Business
EXHIBITIONS
2026
Spring Tide Magan Gallery
2025
Winner - Touchlines of fortitude
Southwark Park Annual Open
How it begins – solo show at the Copper Beech Café Gallery
Green and Stone Gallery Summer Exhibition
Spring Tide Magan Gallery
2024
Women in Art
Southwark Park Annual open
In dog we trust – Solo show at the West Norwood Picture House Gallery – in collaboration with Packed Lunch
2023
Society of Women Artists at the Mall Galleries
Guildford House Open
Women in Art prize
Walk in the Woods – show at the Queen’s Wood café
2022 and before
Football Art Prize 2022
National Open Art competition for contemporary portraits 2017
Permanent Exhibition at The Sussex County Cricket Club. 2018
Successful solo exhibitions at the Brunel Museum 2016 & 2018.
Group exhibition at the Burgh House Hampstead – 2017
Working for a sports publishing house designing book covers and illustrations for their publications
Co-authored and illustrated the ‘Illustrated History of The Ashes - This Thing Can Be Done’ - a book with over 1000 illustrations. 2022
CONTACT
Please contact for enquiries/commissions or make an appointment for a studio visit at
Mansion House Studios
Beckenham Place Park
Beckenham
BR3 1SY
smahaart@gmail.com
