Ancient ballads on canvas
Artworks by Abdus Shakoor
Culture and heritage reveal our identity and of the artists seeking to revive our folk and traditional work, Abdus Shakoor is one such artist. Over a large span of his career, Shakoor has been working on folk motifs and ancient ballads. Folk ballads of Mymensingh-the famous Mahua and Malua love stories, Nakshi Kanthar Maath, Gazir Pata, Manasha Pata have found prominent places in his works. In his paintings, peacocks and parrots have featured on a large scale. Shakoor also uses animal figures such as elephants, bulls, dogs, cats, tigers, birds, serpents and reptiles-all as pleasant and decorative motifs.
After completing a degree in painting, Shakoor joined the Institute of Fine Arts in Dhaka in 1980. He took a keen interest in painting, tapestry, batik and screen-print or serigraph. Earlier he had been a student, painting at the Department of Fine Arts, Chittagong University, under Rashid Chowdhury, who encouraged him to work with our heritage, culture and myths.
Abdus Shakoor's painting career began in 1978 when he was studying in Baroda University in India. His passion for art was fuelled by discussions on arts by his teachers in the university. Questions cropped up about the paintings he had been doing all his young days.
During his study in Baroda University, he started experimenting with different styles, forms and colours. He was highly influenced by Gazir pata, Laxmi Sara, alpana, shital pati, nakshi kantha, wood works, wall paintings and other folk art forms. He was specially moved by the spirit of Bengali art. The works of Jamini Roy also influenced him at the beginning of his career. But over the years he developed a unique style, adapting it from our folk art. Now he seeks to present Bangladesh, the Bengali nationalism, culture and language as his subjects; on the other hand he wants to also portray our Asian identity.
Shakoor's paintings are not simple illustrations of the traditional ballads. He uses calligraphy stylistically on his canvas, which sometimes includes figures of humans along with birds and animals. Each work depicts a complete story that hides our identity. In some paintings, animals like birds, snakes and elephants are presented. Warriors, tigers and an elephant in the centre speak of the beauty of the rural areas where birds, flowers, cattle and snakes are blended together to create a breathtaking natural composition. The paintings are primitive in nature and at the same time modern in their execution. The lines he uses are not necessarily stylised, but they have an interactive attitude of a child with bold outlines. The treatment of lines is simple and untrained in nature giving an authentic illustrative expression to the paintings, as a whole. The artist usually uses four mediums, ink-drawing, opaque-watercolour, acrylic and oil. Among them he mostly uses 'opaque-watercolour' and acrylic. He has also used gouache in a series of his paintings.
“I always try to present my country in my works. When my works are on display in different galleries in the outer world, any foreigner can easily make out that these paintings are from this region. My objective is to make sure that any viewer would be able to look at my work and would be able to detect instantly that these scenes are from Bangladesh,” says Shakoor. Blue, black and red are his primary colours, giving a meditative stance to the characters, outlined by black and white lines, standing on intense backgrounds. The treatment of his figures in his some of his paintings bordered by thin black lines, contains a lot of gestures and impulses, rendering a feeling of ancient scripture to his paintings. His ink drawings are done in contour, with a feeling of space on the background, which gives the composition a certain likeness to portraits.
It is clear from Shakoor's paintings that he looks for an identity for the country through the conventional means of expression, rather than personal means or rather towards finding his own solution. His paintings are illustrative rather than expressive, using contemporary native expression styles to portray his illustrations. However, Shakoor's subjects are not new-fangled. He has worked on the same themes over the years. The time is now ripe for him to locate new themes and give a distinctive edge to his works. The new generation expects some bold departures for a painter of his stature.
Abdus Shakoor's solo painting exhibition will begin soon in India.