ARTIST STATEMENT

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“It is only with the heart that one can truly see.

What is essential is invisible to the eye"

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Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "The Little Prince"

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When I am drawn to a work of art, I instinctively know how it makes me feel. There is emotional engagement before rational thoughts of what, how and why. 

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Beauty and simplicity, celebrating the aesthetic, silencing the noise and transcending the mundane, everyday realities, allowing fragments of memories to feed into present experiences, exploring what resonates within... this is what I seek in art and image-making.

To have the feeling of the night, not to just see it as it is.

TARIQ DAJANI - BIOGRAPHY

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Born in the UK to a Palestinian father and English mother, Tariq Dajani’s early experience of life in Europe and the Middle East gave him a valuable perspective of cultural and ethnic diversity. An early creative interest in music and art later led him to photography and printmaking.

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Over a period of 25 years, Dajani learned his craft working in advertising and design and on art projects and exhibitions. He gradually developed a style that resonated with the truth and emotion that he was seeking. Recurring themes in his work relate to identity, belonging, and his Arab heritage.

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He has exhibited in numerous shows internationally, and has won several awards. His prints are owned by art lovers and collectors worldwide, and are included in several public and private collections.

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A freethinker, dreamer and picture-maker, Dajani now spends most of his time working on art projects and tutoring in photography and photogravure printmaking in his ancient farmhouse studio in Spain. He combines creative interests with a healthy lifestyle connecting to nature, working on his organic farm, and being with his wife and their family of Saluki dogs and Arabian horses.

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WHAT OTHERS HAVE SAID

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"There is a strange-making in much of Dajani’s work, a way of making perfectly ordinary things seem quite strange and extraordinary. Such work leaves the viewer feeling touched, moved, disturbed, with a whole complex of emotions, desperately wanting to know more.” 

~ John Wood, poet, photographic historian & editor

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“Tariq Dajani is a photographer and printmaker. He is mostly known for his poetic portrait studies of the Arabian horse and the hunting falcon. Beautifully observed and mastered, the work displays intellectual depth and emotional maturity. It is contemporary while invoking something of the European Masters.” 

~ Barbara Rowell, gallery owner, Jacaranda Images