Dato' Sharifah is one of the most successful female artists working in the domain of abstract painting. Her bold and forceful strokes are combined with refined textures resulting in a unique surface quality. The technique of using modelling paste on canvas for its textural quality was inspired by the Indonesian artist A.D. Pirous. In Hymns Of The Earth II, captivating nature inspired forms were carefully balanced to achieve a harmonious composition. As the first batch of fine-art students from the Mara Institute of Technology (now a university), graduating in 1971, Dato' Sharifah Fatimah served notice of her huge potential when she won the hugely coveted Major Award in the 1979 Salon Malaysia, though she had clinched the Minor Award in the Malaysian Landscape competition in 1972, the year she held her first solo in Singapore. In 1981, she won a Minor Award in the Young Contemporary Artists (Bakat Muda Sezaman) in 1981. Her career path was simply astonishing. Upon graduation from ITM, she achieved her BFA at Reading University, England in 1976, and an MFA at Pratt Institute, New York, in 1978, under the JDR III Fund fellowship. Her international accolade was a 3rd Prize in the Islamic World Painting Biennial in Teheran, Iran, in 2003. In 2006, the Sultan of Kedah conferred a Dato'ship on her.