During Dato' Sharifah Fatimah's visit to the Petra ruins in Jordan in 1992, she came up with a tactile and subdued colour palette, incorporating the use of modelling paste. The artist used the technique not only as “majestic markings of antiquity” to interpret the location, but also as a vehicle to express her affinity with nature. Graceful, bold sweeps of palette knife executed in varied colours contrasts with a dark backdrop all boxed by thick bars on all four sides. Dato' Sharifah Fatimah Syed Zubir graduated from the pioneering batch of fine art students from the Mara Institute of Technology (now a university) in 1971. She studied for her BFA at the Reading University, England, in 1973-1976, and her MFA at the Pratt Institute, New York, in 1976-1978, under the JDR III Fund fellowship. She won the Minor Award in the Malaysian Landscape competition in 1972 and the Young Contemporary Artists (Bakat Muda Sezaman) in 1981. In 1979, she won the coveted Major Award in the Salon Malaysia 1979. She also won 3rd Prize in the 2003 Biennial of Contemporary Painting of the Islamic World, Teheran. For her tremendous contributions, she was conferred a Dato'ship by the Sultan of Kedah in 2006.