Statement
“For the artist communication with nature remains the most essential condition. The artist is human; himself nature; part of nature within natural space.” Paul Klee
Subject of this project comprises about two flowers “Sumbal – red flower” a tree that matches its name in beauty, and “Amaltas – yellow flower”, which is also called “umeed ka phool”: flower of hope. Lahore, the city of gardens, appears mind-blowing at the time of bloom of these trees and the project attempts to articulate awe and admiration for this bloom. I have nostalgic relation with Lahore’s landscape painting. My initial training in art – drawing – ensued with Khalid Iqbal, who is a Pakistani maestro of landscape painting and painted Lahore’s landscape throughout his life. I paint the happenings in everyday life, from the pleasure that natural beauty yields to an effrontery of socio-political systems. The process results in uncanny abstraction of subject, materiality, and method.
Neither it’s realism nor it’s pure abstraction. It is a planned distortion. My art practice is a process. I trust the process and follow my all-time favorite Lucian Freud and Giacometti’s procedure of working; constant scrutiny destroying and remaking work with no plan and guarantee of success, no formula, trusting on hard work. “I hoped that if I concentrated enough the intensity of the scrutiny alone would force life into the pictures,” (Lucian Freud). I draw marks on paper, canvas and in this project wood surface too. I have sculpted, rendered, and painted the marks. The wood panels correspond to drawing, painting and sculptural forms; it’s a kind of tension amidst these physically embodied concepts. I admire Clement Greenberg’s thought “the formal attributes of a painting are of crucial importance, whereas its emotional or representational content is secondary, even redundant.” During the process of my image-making, I look at the painting and look at it again, and look at it again as it continues. I don’t tend to look at meaning or content. It limits the sensational enjoyment. For me, meaning in painting comes naturally. Hence I paint the pleasure of painting.
