LANDSCAPE EXHIBITION – Inspiring gardens

LAHORE – Shahid Jalal’s ongoing exhibition at the Ejaz Art Gallery is simple, attractive and vivid, drawing many art lovers to view it. This landscape display is centred around a couple of parks in Lahore, mainly Lawrence Gardens and a lesser known Linear Park on the outskirts of Model Town. His love for capturing nature is evident therefore when he paints lush green grass, the reflection of trees in water, and radiant red leaves signifying autumn.
Jalal says that the exhibition has been done taking about three years. He chose these two parks in particular for their extravagant display of beauty. “Linear Park was something new for me as I had passed it on numerous occasions without actually going in,” says Jalal. “But once I went in, I was instantly taken in by its lakes and waterways and the very mature trees lining these waterways. What particularly charmed me were the islands made in the lakes and the quaint wooden bridges connecting them,” he says.
Jalal says the bridges offered him the opportunity to see the park from perspectives that he could not have seen the scenery from. He says early morning and late evening visits gave him more material to work with.
NATURE-ARTIST’S STIMULANT: “The Lawrence Gardens have been a source of inspiration for my work since the past three decades. If I lived in another lifetime I am sure I would continue to find inspiration, even more inspiration from the park. In fact this is my third exhibition in which I have used the Lawrence Gardens for my paintings. I particularly love the two hills in the park when they partially block the early morning sunlight from falling on various parts of the garden,” he said.
Speaking about his painting itself, Jalal says that the fences that are seen in the paintings surrounding the waterways and the park were very integral to compositions. To be able to successfully incorporate them in a painting and harmonize them with the rest of the landscape proved to be a difficult task.
REFLECTIONS: “In some paintings there are three different sets of fences dividing the composition in three sections. In ‘The Simbal Tree on the East side’ I think it works quite well. In other paintings the presence of the fences becomes even more complicated when they are reflected in the water, which makes the job more difficult but I enjoy these challenges,” prides Jalal.
This brings to view that reflections dominate nearly all of Jalal’s paintings done in the Linear Park. Water and reflections of the landscape around it are therefore present in most of the paintings of the park. Painting water poses a great problem for a painter as the changing light and movements in the water makes it very difficult to get the right effect. Some reflections have to be re-painted many times until the effect works.
BEING THERE: “One can use photographs to paint the more complex scenes but I belong to a different school of thought, where half the fun of painting is the interaction with the landscape by actually being there,” says Jalal. “In any case my paintings are not an exact representation of the scenes in front of me. They are an interpretation and a reaction to the light I see falling on the objects in the area. I doubt if I would have been able to develop my own vision if I had used photographs, as a photograph restricts you in many ways. Using photographs however is perfectly valid if they are used as a reference and the painter does not become a slave to the camera’s eye, as I see in a number of works done by younger painters these days,” he says.
He says, “On average I visit the spot where I am painting at least half a dozen times at exactly the same time to catch the light which had originally caught my attention. This has brought great discipline in my life and made me a healthier person in mind and body. How could I have got this if I had restricted myself to my studio with photographs?”
FLOWERS ONLY: Four of the paintings are those of only flowers. No landscapes here; Shahid Jalal explains that these involved a lot of techniques. “The two cockscomb paintings of the Lawrence Gardens and the two chrysanthemum paintings of the Linear Park are perfect examples of a difficult subject to paint. The view in all four existed for a short while but because of the complexity and detail of the design I had to resort to using various techniques to complete them in the studio. These techniques included painting by observation, sketching and memory.” He even used still life techniques to get the effect he wanted.
NOT THAT STILL: “Not exactly still life,” he corrects, “But the process of painting flowers in the studio. To get to the very essence of the flowers, especially the cockscombs which is luckily a very hardy flower and remains fresh for a fairly long time, I would pick some (illegally, I’m afraid) and bring them into my studio and paint them into the picture. I would ultimately re-set the tones to bring them into harmony with the flowers painted from observation at the spot. As you can see the flower paintings are very large and complex compositions especially the ‘Yellow Cockscombs with a Green Fence’.”
MEASURING SUCCESS: Shahid Jalal view of a ‘successful painting’ is not based upon objective benchmarks. “People react to paintings according to their own likes and dislikes. What pleases a viewer is what makes it successful in his or her eyes. For a painter like me if I feel I have done justice to that first impression I formed in my mind when I start a painting, I call that picture successful,” he says.
SUBJECT FOCUS: He also specifies his tilt towards solo exhibitions. “I am of the opinion that a solo show enables a viewer to see a whole range of work done by a painter over an extended period of time,” says Jalal. “Most of my shows have a particular theme, for example my previous show was exclusively based on Tahira Mazhar Ali’s pool garden. A one man show enables a painter to show his deep involvement in a subject. This is only possible by exhibiting a whole series of works done on a particular theme.”