An accomplished abstract painter, Dato’ Sharifah Fatimah’s “lyrical abstraction” style distinguishes herself from others. Her technique involves multi-coloured layers of paint typically in red, green, purple and blue that are applied to form geometrical yet organic shapes. Dato’ Sharifah Fatimah Syed Zubir was from the pioneering batch of fine art students from the Mara Institute of Technology (now Universiti Teknologi Mara) in 1967 and graduated with a diploma in 1971. She enrolled in a course in fine arts at Reading University in England in 1973 and graduated with first class honours. She completed her postgraduate studies at the Pratt Institute in New York in 1976 with a John D Rockefeller III Fund Fellowship. She took a museum management course at City University of London in 1987 while she was a curator coordinator at the National Art Gallery Malaysia from 1982 to 1990. During her stint at the institution, she curated Ibrahim Hussein’s exhibition, A Retrospective. In 2017, to mark the 50th anniversary of her career as an artist, she presented a solo exhibition entitled Song Of Eucalyptus at Segaris Art Center, Kuala Lumpur.