Ramina Saadatkhan, an abstract painter living and working in Baku, Azerbaijan, describes her canvases as inner landscapes shaped by memory rather than illustration. In an interview published on the Singulart blog on October 9, 2026, she explains that her paintings rarely begin with a conscious decision to depict a specific recollection; instead, emotions surface gradually through color, movement and unexpected form. Her route to abstraction passed through documentary photography. Saadatkhan spent formative years photographing environments connected with forensic medicine and mortuaries, an experience she says pushed her beyond her comfort zone and made her more attentive to the emotional and psychological dimensions of being human. Behind the camera she learned, in her words, to observe rather than simply look — a sensitivity she now carries into painting, where she pursues the invisible emotional reality behind the moment. She also credits time teaching art to children, whose unselfconscious way of working reminded her that maturity in art need not mean losing curiosity or the courage to create without fear of judgment. Her current practice balances intuition with structure: she begins with an emotional direction rather than a fixed image, then lets the composition develop through dialogue between what she intends and what the canvas reveals. Baku itself — a city of ancient architecture alongside contemporary forms, with the Caspian Sea generating constant shifts of light — feeds her visual memory and its ornamental traditions. The painting she highlights as most representative, "Joy of Being," captures the sense of inner liberation and emotional openness she associates with her present moment, without functioning as a literal self-portrait.