Interviews: Colours in the Service of Love and Beauty

Interview with Ikram Yakoubi

Colours in the Service of Love and Beauty
Interview with Ikram Yakoubi


MEDVOICES: What is your specific painting style?
I think, I don’t have a specific style, all what I know as I never studied fine art in my life, nor having any academic training, that my style comes from my soul and from my heart, I paint because it is life for me, and as Frida Kahlo said “painting completed my life”, I think, this is the same for me. However, if you want me to define my style, I can say that it tends to be surrealist.
MEDVOICES: What inspired you to draw your first painting? Do you have a special feeling for it?
I loved to challenge myself in the first painting, as I have a passion for myths; I wanted to produce an art work that has a mythical story. “Arc of Noah” was my first painting, painting animals and human on the same boat reminds us all of how much we belong to nature and to each other. My painting was a manifestation of this oneness, it was childlike and symbolic, including happy colors. I have had this thought always and I have always wanted to put it in an art work.
MEDVOICES: What artistic schools have most influenced your talent?
Surrealism is what has influenced me the most and, in particular the works of the contemporary surrealist painter Vladimir Kush.
MEDVOICES: you seem to be crisscrossed by different states and stations, and that makes the true essence of the artist, the human that you are. What is the difference between your early oeuvre and the latest?
Every day, I am learning something new, every day I am really different. Art has set me free and raised me up. I think my early art works were more naïve and more natural, with less techniques, I could only let my brush paint , but with time, I feel more confident in my art works and in my ability to apply the idea I have in my mind . Every piece is a part of my soul , and every time my soul raises to see better and clearer visions , I fall in love more with my art , and the more I fall in love with it, the more it teaches me and reveals to me its mystic secrets.
MEDVOICES: You are an English teacher, a poet as well, how do you balance your painting life with your working career? How poetic are your paintings?
Well, I was working as a teacher but because it requires so much commitment and attention, I had to leave my job in the capital to be completely devoted to my art and to painting. It was so hard to balance for me and I am a beginner painter. I know some think that I am crazy but this is what happened, I left my job because this is what I really needed to do the most. I write poems when I feel the need for it, writing helps me as well, when I need the pen to translate what I feel, the pen does not disappoint me.
I think if we all listen carefully, we listen to poems of our souls , yes, my paintings are poetic because they are telling stories before everything, though colors and dervishes which are for me the symbol of divine and unconditional love. The souls come from love and to love they go back, we come from positivity, from light, and to them, we are going back. Human beings are such beautiful beings and their potentials and abilities are really endless, we only should keep looking and listening.
MEDVOICES: how is your relation with the world, family, and friends?
The world is a place to discover at every moment, it is a gift translated into friends and family, the closest ones to our hearts. Love is my biggest inspiration in life , and because of this love I have in my heart for every one close to me, I can paint . At the same time, my art gives me positive energy enough to give back more love and care to my close ones.
MEDVOICES: The voyager within your work is mysteriously crossed by spiritual states and stations, something very kin to the Sufi experience, no? How Sufi you are Ikram Yacoubi? What else ghostly haunting you?
Who knows me very well, know that I am spiritual. It is the human spirit which will last forever, it is born every time over and over.
I tried to express this in my last painting “spirit’s talk”. So yes you can say that I am somehow a Sufi, which is about setting the soul free. And this is what my art also has given me, it has set me free.
As ANA TZAREV says «Mankind’s drive to create is an endless and fascinating mystery. To produce something from nothing is to embrace your higher self, the part of your being that is a direct descendent of the Maker of all things» , so I think I am so much haunted by everything in relation with creativity . I have so much thirst to know and to learn more and to apply and experience them in my art works. Everything inspires me, songs, stories, paintings, movies, music, etc. This is how humans should be, they should follow what inspires them to move on and go for their calls.
Medvoices: the dervish whirling is a trace inhabiting your work. It is a leitmotif in your art?
Is movement and dance vital to the human body, being?
First I love dancing also, you know that dervishes are supposed to dance , that act means a lot to me; it s a kind of freeing the soul from its prison of the mind, you are just meant to melt into divine oneness and unconditional love to this universe regarding its differences in terms of people’s races, colors of skin, etc . To dance is to melt, to keep silent and listen carefully to the soul’s whispers and inner voice.
Med Voices: art therapy?
It is something I really want to focus on in the future, I am seriously trying to work in this field one day hopefully. Taking myself as an example, I have discovered how much art is important in people’s lives; I am really someone different after starting my journey with colors. I started painting using colors in 2011, in a small painting club with some friends, before that, I was drawing only, I can say that colors have healed me in many ways, and it has offered me the balance and the gift of continuous joy. I am convinced that when I paint, I know deep inside that everything is going to be fine, as long as I paint, no problem will last. It is the same for anyone who shares with me the passion of any gift; music, theatre... For me, art is able to heal you, to heal the soul and help your self esteem and progress. Whatever your wounds are, colors can really make a big change by transforming the negative energies, “the black energies” into colorful energies which I translate into positivity.
Med Voices: What do you hope the art of Ikram Yacoubi will look like in a few years time?
I really hope, it is getting better and more solid , I want to improve my skills, improve my techniques, and keep working on my own style, I hope my art can be heard and to heal spirits through the colors . At the moment, I am not completely satisfied with the techniques I use, because I feel that they should be developed . That’s why I keep practicing on my own.
I am sorry that Tunisian government is not that pioneer in encouraging the young artists and emerging painters. In the European countries, artists can receive better support from both government and organizations. Here, I am not sure that there are Tunisian organizations which can support us.
MEDVOICES: Is there a message in your art that you
want people to take hold of?
Yes, there is and my message is “to live”, you are here for a purpose, you are here because you are meant to do something, to be something, so why don’t we look for what we are born for, instead of spending so much time neglecting the fact of how much life is beautiful. My colors want to say “live”. Yes to colors, yes to life.


To see more of Ikram's art, visit her web page:
http://ikramyac.wix.com/colors-are-the-life-


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