Page 70 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

PAINTING 67

super-natural flowers, trees and birds are floating in a
dreamlike world, and pulsating female figures are moving
around. It is as if a narration of the dream of woman’s
attempt to gain freedom, the language and style of
expression of which is completely original (fig. 1.38). Jolly
also wants to capture the physical pain of woman in
symbolic expressions. For that reason, she sometimes
attaches three-dimensional objects to her paintings, bringing
profound meaningfulness to representation.
In his style of drawing, Sheikh Afzal is perfectly realistic;
however, through proficiency in style of drawing and
through technique of presentation, his realistic human forms
achieve a different dimension. The focus of his interest is on
the lower class children who labor for their living. He places
them against an almost abstract background that is cruel and without context. Through fig. 1.40 Mohammed
the exact repetition of the figures maybe he attempts to represent the dreary misery of Iqbal, Could You
their life (pl. 1.41). Afzal’s recent works have begun to display upper-class women in Recognize Me? oil,
an almost same type of realistic representation. Maybe he represents here their 1998
loneliness despite being surrounded by an environment and companions.
Though Niloofar Chaman was one of the youngest artists of this decade, her
compositions were strongly distinctive. In the primary phase, she used her skill of
creating realistic figures, bringing simplicity to figures, two-dimensionality and
geometric composition to the picture plane. At this stage, her paintings are virtually
monochromatic. In later stages, she became agitated in application of colors– creating
her language of painting through the flat application of bright primary colors and
through bringing about substantial change in the resemblance to reality of the forms.
Later, Niloofar brought further changes to her style. In contrast to the customary
method of applying oil paint, she creates forms through small strokes of the brush,
much of the canvas remaining colorless. She also brings the shapes down to childish
naïve simplicity; innovation enters the subject and composition as well. Recently a
massive change has again come to her paintings. Radiant shapes in bright yellow
against a backdrop of deep blue seem to be floating in the emptiness of the cosmos. It
is as if the organic liveliness of the shapes expresses the frightening mysteriousness of
the subconscious mind of woman (pl. 1.42).
Atia Islam Anne, another one of the youngest artists, also has a distinct language of
painting. She is forcefully vocal against the injustice and oppression against woman
and she likes to express it in a language that is straightforward. Though her language
of painting is filled with symbols and metaphors, the symbols are simple and easy to
understand. Anne mainly intends to express the suppression of women within the
boundaries of family. Sometimes Annie represents, with horrific reality, the position
of woman in a male dominated society, woman who faces outrageous brutality of man