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The art of painting small

Azmeer Hossain's "Small is Beautiful"

Dr. S. Manzoorul Islam, dmm University
The art of painting small has found quite a few dedicated artists in Bangladesh who usually follow the tradition of miniature painting of the subcontinent. The early miniatures in south and western India, dating back to the 9th century, were done on palm leaf and paper, depicting religious deities. When the Persian miniatures were introduced in the 16th century by the Moghuls, they brought with them their colour and intricately done portraits and court scenes. But not all small paintings are miniatures, since the latter employ a range of techniques, styles and subjects that characterize the genre. Figures are important, as well as design, but most importandy, the paintings are marked by a narrative imagination that ranges freely over the social or spiritual landscape, and highlights moments of devotion, romance or surrender.
Azmeer Hosain is not a miniature painter and his small paintings do not conform to most of the usual characteristics of miniature painting. He prefers to work in watercolour and mixed media on canvas that are considered 'normal,' i.e. from 40x30 cm to 76x56 cm. His last solo exhibition, "Emotion Recollected in Tranquility" at Bengal Gallery (3-16 May 2013) displayed a collection of such paintings, and a few collagraph works. The main theme of the exhibition was his reimagining an identity that would deliver him from the in-betweenness of exile. Done in New York, the works showed him striving to understand the spatial and temporal dysfunctionlities that problematize an exile's life and his search for a tranquil centre amid the imposing and alienating urban facades. He takes recourse to emotion, since, for an exile, it provides an escape into memory.
In "Small is Beautiful”, Azmeer continues to search for the still centre but the spatial and temporal equations have changed. Done on small surfaces (4x3 cm to 11x8 cm) that suggest a close focusing of his vision, the paintings show an artist who is more relaxed, and in control of his own emotions. As one looks (or peers) at the paintings, objects appear to take recognizable shapes. Apart from the obvious ones such as a book, glasses and conch shells that Azmeer draws with media poster colour in one painting, one sees the outline of buildings, interiors of houses, cityscapes with bridges and aqueducts and landscape features. Some of the paintings employ geometric configuration while others have staggered shapes that do not open up to specific suggestions. But what distinguishes the paintings is their layered composition and rich textured areas of concentrations. Azmeer is a meticulous artist, putting his paintings through multiple numbers of washes before his desired consistency is achieved. His watercolour is fluid while his mixed media is evocative. Like the rings in the timber of a tree that help determine its age, Azmeer's paintings often come with layered areas of wash that suggest how recent or remote that wash had been. As one looks at the paintings, one is not sure if Azmeer's
perspectives recede or emerge. It all depends on the mood. In cityscapes, dominated by various shades of brown, blue, even pink, the perspectives, foregrounds and the layered composition create a distancing effect, while in his naturescapes the feeling is one of closeness, of belonging, Azmeer uses green judiciously, sporadically; but his green is as reassuring as his brown is distancing. Indeed, even in interior spaces or in outdoors where the objects lie at a touching distance, there are more absences than presences. Where are the people? One asks, or birds? Or any form of sentiment life? The absence of the human factors brings out the emptiness that not only an exile in an alien city but an inhabitant of that city too has to endure.
Azmeer's paintings straddle the ground between miniature painting (which puts a premium value on intimacy, ease and emotion) and easel painting (where scale is important). His small paintings, at least in "Small is Beautiful", show a world of where scale surrenders to a scrutinizing eye and to a formal aesthetics where emotions are best kept in suspension. The world of his small paintings is a place where cities are orderly but bereft of life, and nature has all the charm to enliven us, but there are not many people around to appreciate the charm. Essentially, the paintings are about the human predicament in our time - shapes, objects, colours, even nature, only reflect the state of the predicament and the contingent nature of our todays and tomorrows.
Most of the paintings have been done in the last three years (one in 1995) showing Azmeer's continued interest in the art of small painting. He has invested not only his attention and energy in painting in small surfaces things that are sometimes big and fathomless, but also in having a style and technique that make his work unique. His works have consistency and strength; they reinterpret the logic of scale by engaging the viewer as convincingly as his larger paintings do. Small, in his work, is both problematic and beautiful.
The exhibition opens today and continues till October 1 at Shilpangan Gallery.