This freedom—a condition that gained added significance following the regime’s rise to power under Saddam Hussein in the late 1970s—has enabled her to explore her relationship with her homeland and to develop a personal visual language with which to express it.

However, this awareness of her Arab heritage did not result in slavish imitation, but was forged with her own romantic imagination and an appreciation of western figurative traditions to create enigmatic images in which narrative and symbolism are intertwined.

Much of Suad’s painting is characterized by an intense dreamlike and poetic sensibility that draws on motifs and symbols from within the traditions of Middle Eastern art.

In recent years, these richly colored representations of paradise and of sleeping cities bathed in turquoise blue, have disappeared from her work as she has become increasingly preoccupied with the plight of Iraq.

Her sister, Layla al-Attar (1944-1993), also an artist, together with her husband and their housekeeper, were killed by a U.S. missile attack on the Iraqi Intelligence main building which was just behind her house, ordered by U.S. President Bill Clinton on 27 June 1993.