Meet New Artist Yasmine Iskander | Finding Joy through Community
“When I paint, I feel it in my heart.”
Yasmine Iskander is an intuitive colorist and abstract artist. Yasmine’s art shows passion and boldness. It inspires joy and optimism. Her work is passionate and direct. For her, art is a fundamental way to communicate her extraordinary life journey with developmental challenges and a complex medical history.
Yasmine is hearing impaired and has learning disabilities. She has also had numerous surgeries, some of them life threatening, including open heart surgeries, brain surgeries, and others. Preparing to apply for the 2018–2019 VSA Emerging Young Artists Program, Yasmine talked about what a detour means for her, and how her medical challenges represent detours in her life.
Her thoughts and reflections are incorporated in her artist’s statement. She will often say: “When facing detours, you have to be brave. I was afraid at first when I face each of my difficult medical challenges, but I took lots of deep breaths, and I imagined my family and my community standing with me and making me feel safe and loved. They come into my mind the same way that my paintings come into my mind. They appear, and they fill me with emotion and energy.”
Yasmine’s artwork has found a great deal of success in a short period of time, having just started to receive professional art instruction in 2015. Previous to that, Yasmine had always shown an interest and understanding of colors.
Yasmine is always surrounded by dozens of paints, colors, and types. While her creative process has evolved overtime, some aspects have remained the same. She firsts looks around until captured by a color in that moment. Then off she goes, expressing what is inside, bringing it outside for the whole world to see. As she says: “When I paint, I feel it in my heart. Painting makes me feel excited, exuberant! I love painting and colors.”
Besides her passion for painting, Yasmine cares deeply about others, often going out of her way to help those in need. While in school she received the Good Samaritan Award for the help she provided her fellow classmates and has spent time working in Senior Residences; spreading happiness and smiles to everyone around her. It is particularly important to her that people in the disability community are understood and receive help. For Yasmine, art has had a profound impact on her life. Through art, she is achieving her potential and is contributing to the community she lives in. One of her dreams is to help other people with disabilities find the same confidence, connection, and success through their own art.
Yasmine has exhibited extensively since she began panting in 2015. Her paintings have been shown at The Torpedo Factory in Virginia, the Del Ray Artisans in Alexandria, the Children’s National Medical Center in D.C., and at the State of Virginia General Assembly Building. Most recently she won the Second Prize in the Kennedy Center 2018–2019 VSA Emerging Young Artist Program. As winner of this curated competition, her piece “Dragon” is currently part of an exhibition entitled Detour which opened in Washington (Rayburn House in Capitol Hill) and will be touring the country for up to two years, ending at the Kennedy Center Hall of Nations.
For Yasmine, being part of ArtLifting helps materialize her dream of being part of a community.
Yasmine Iskander’s current collection with ArtLifting may be found here.
