LAHORE – “I believe that abstraction has the power to transfer the viewer into another world, the inner world of feeling and imagination,” says artist Sajida Hussain. Her eyes twinkle and she smiles proudly yet modestly, as more and more people pass by paying her compliments of her exhibition.
The Collectors’ Gallery was slowly seeing small crowds of art lover coming in, surrounded with a busy murmur of excited conversation. In the middle of them all is Sajida Hussain, wearing bright red, much like the hue of some of her paintings put up here and now, she meets her teacher and her mentor, Mansoor Rahi who came with his wife Hajra Mansoor, to start the inauguration.
Sajida’s paintings were all about women. Women, being one of her favourite subjects to paint, have in this exhibition, taken such fabulous expressions, with their bodies, that whoever came to see was left open mouthed at the creations. Oil paint on canvas was what Sajida had opted as medium and the effect was vivid, magnificent, and powerful.
The regal aura of these painted women was remarkable. Most of the works had a gray and white hue, with sudden streaks of very bright colour like yellow, orange, red and blue-green, which served to colour the subjects hair, or her clothes. Each painting had a drapery behind the woman. “I love draperies, and I love to put them in each of my paintings in the background,” says Sajida.
“Also expressions are very important for me. One can see that in many paintings I have not even given the woman a face, in fact only a shape. But even then, her body has turned or twisted in such a way that it is inevitable to see and know what her expression may be,” she says. Mansoor Rahi appreciated the painting display and teacher as he was he did not stop himself from giving his aesthetic advice to his student.
“I can see a conflict of direction in a painting. But one is always learning,” he pointed out. “Sajida’s display is excellent and she is a fine artist indeed. When I see her exhibitions, I feel very proud of her,” he says. Some of the best paintings had immediately been sold. Sajida’s style is expressionism, with the genre called Neo Realistic Romanticism, but her own individualistic style of paintings differs from all of her contemporaries.
Flairs and draperies, flying colours and fading outlines, dream like realities are what she paints. She has managed to excel in all, from palette knife to charcoal, to brush strokes.
