Lubna Speitan showcases her distinctive and instantly recognisable style in galleries and exhibitions across London. Working predominantly in oils and acrylics she paints landscapes, portraits and abstracts. Most distinctive, however, are her award-winning monochrome nightscapes of London.

 

Lubna’s award-winning nightscape paintings and ink drawings shimmer with darkness. She captures the enigmatic uncanniness of nights in the city, nights lit by brittle halogen, icy headlights, reflected street signs, and the sheen of rainwater. The carefully blended range of matt colours create the elusive and reflective tones of the city at night, with subtle variants of greys and whites picking out contemporary landmarks from a deserted train station to the London Eye.

 

These scenes are full of secrets, hinting at the stories that unfold through London’s long nights. A hidden London: the city of those who live on the streets, the friendless, the outsiders. The paintings reveal the loneliness that looms over London in the dead of night – a loneliness that nevertheless connects us as human beings, and which is tenderly embraced in this work.

 

These scenes have become considerably more pertinent during this era where we are faced with lockdown and isolation due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Accompanying this, her paintings reflect the sweeping stillness of our deserted city with little less than discarded PPE littering the streets frequented by not many more than the lonesome fox.

 

Born in London 1983, Lubna Speitan has a BA hons in Graphic Design. She is also passionate about social politics, environmentalism, anthropology and philosophy.