Wondrous images with wooden windows & doors

Mir Nahid Niazi Nipu, recently had her exhibition of mainly oil on wood at "La Galerie", Alliance Francaise, this being her second solo effort despite the fact that she is still a student at the Institute of Fine Arts. Nahid said, "All my works have some touch of oil in it with a play of the real and the representative. I try to hold the visual interest of the viewer until he/she begins to think and then gets carried away in his/her imagination." Nahid painted a lot of doors, windows and box top, sometimes using actual wood, at times painting over the wooden bits and pieces, adding sections and portions that she wanted. Thus the art pieces appeared realistic and yet were sometimes purely painted over. Her realistic presentation of broken woods with their locks and other paraphernalia created beauty out of something quite mundane. At times her exhibits were three dimensional and sometimes purely illusionary with oil on board which she has seen so often, specially when she had recently sent her work overseas to Scotland, where she had been to attend a workshop and then had gone there again to receive a prize.

About her "Burning image-1" she said that she did on board what she normally did on canvas, that is, presenting her fascination for wood, its textures and the other elements that go with wooden planks. She said that earlier, in her solo exhibition, she had presented wood on canvas and this time she had directly experimented with wood, painting over it and adding bits and pieces such as colour to make the texture more interesting. In her final year she was no longer restricted by academic dictates. She called her exhibition "The Ruin" because she was fascinated by old wooden doors and windows that are fast disappearing and are not being replaced by items similar to them. Her work, in some ways, was to revive our past architecture's doors and windows with their stress on wood, when nowadays all we see is cement, steel, concrete and bits of bricks.

She said, "We must keep a record of our cultural past while we progress with our mechanization and modernization. Our heritage is something that fascinates many of our artists. In 'Burning image' I've painted directly on wood. Some of my work is on plywood too. "This too contains plywood on wood with addition of paints to enhance the attraction and play up the intrinsic texture of the material. The ring was painted on as were the hinges and the nails. The red portion was for relief of composition to the variations of brown and blue. The body of the wood was made interesting by the splashes of variations of burnt sienna cobalt blue and yellow ochre. This was to stress on the attractive lifestyle of our past. This too was a play of illusion with paints where the viewer was faced with a painting that was so real that one could almost see through the cracks and touch the board to feel what was in or beyond it. The diagonal gray bar and the other bits of pieces of additions with real wood or painted ones titillated our fancy and imagination.

In the oil on board creation "Rejected box" Nahid dealt with the subject of cartons and boxes that are becoming an integral part of our life with the increase of our exports and imports. Our contact with the world outside was growing while our passion for our own life is diminishing somewhat. The base was plywood but on it were painted strips as well as the writings and the nails so that one felt that one is gazing at a section of a box. "It looks like a door too," Nahid added, "When huge luggage arrives it appears like this. When I went in 2000 and 2001 with a Royal Overseas League scholarship,I had the experience of dealing with such enormous boxes. I had stayed and worked there and held an exhibition there at Edinburgh. I had done some work there and had taken some of my work from home. Eight of my works were on display. There were five of us from the different continents, such as Australia, Africa and Europe, and I had gone from Asia. I was given the choice of choosing the time of my departure and I had gone in summer so as to avoid the bitterly cold weather. I had then got a Lucy Morrison Memorial Prize to add to my collection of other five earlier awards from UK and Bangladesh."

In the gray, blue, ochre, burnt-sienna and black creation in "Broken window" we were faced again with the amazing grains of wood and the joy one gets from them. Some of the items were of real wood and some of plywood board. The illusion factor was used again with careful use of colours, lines and texture work. Nahid had used a thick brush, spatula and knives as she felt comfortable in them as the technique was best handled with them. She had prepared the wood with oils such as linseed oil and turpentine to preserve the work and then used dry paint over the wet area. It was presented with a switch, a broken handle, with irregular bars at the side, bottom, middle and bottom, as well as interesting cracks all over. This could also have been taken for two parts of a shut door.

With washes of vermilion with strips of wood at the side, top and placed diagonally is "Rejected", Nahid said," I have portrayed a section of a broken door here and the red portion is painted over. When I work, what I've seen and liked around me, I have put in my paintings. I have actually witnessed images such as this and the streak of gray that you find on the ruby red was to create interest as are also the texture work in horizontal forms of gray and black. Sometimes, after I've finished my piece it was totally different from what was my original conception. The boards have been fixed, similarly, to add reality and lend further interest to the creation. The vermilion in this piece set it apart from the other creations. "Rejected" had broken panels at the sides, framing the russet creation remained dramatic because of the torn black hole on top, the apparent burnt umber scrapings showing through the ochre, and the painted over scarlet arrows. It was apparently an unwanted piece of wood and yet the bars and holes plus the combination of the shades of russet made the image irresistible. Nails and strings hanging from end added character to the creation. The variations of the russet shades, black and gray,made a simple subject not only attractive but dynamic due the combination of realism and modernity.

Yet another elaboration on wood and board was "Broken window", in which we saw the bashed up window that had various elements to protect it from being destroyed altogether and so making it useful. The black and gray along other dark shadows brought in the views beyond the window. The main window itself was in shades of gold and russet combined with reddish brown, dull blue and delicate vertical bars of gray and black that all went to present a life of the past which was barely hanging on. The nails, bars at two sides and others put in between in various angles lent interest as did the gray scraped portions which added to the texture work. Thus something simple and often ignored was worked upon and presented before us to admire and gaze upon, and which we might be able to buy and care to keep for all times at home.

Perhaps more interesting for the conservative viewer was "Broken image-1", oil on paper in which there was a piling of wood almost like a broken fence, where there is also a portion of a broken window. Delicately done netting in burnt umber went with the realistic presentation of planks of wood which Nahid had presented so often in her earlier works. The work was mainly a juggling of light and shade as we see the dark planks in the forefront and sides and the golden sunshine behind them. Even the sunshine had variations of yellow and orange, while the flecks of russet on the burnt umber, gray and black presented something gorgeous, and reminded one of the exquisite play of light and shade of the European painters like Rembrandt,Goya and Ruysdael.

In "Burning image-1" one found a panel of three oil and board creations which dealt with Nahid's obsession with broken doors had come back in force and here we are confronted with three doors, one being multi-coloured with red, yellow, purple and bars were to be seen through the opening. The panels at the sides are blue, yellow and contained a ring. The second panel had crisscrosses of beige wood on brown and blue with black to heighten or outline bits and pieces of the wood on the board. The third image was in green and gray with flecks of umber and beige showing through to depict scraped up portions. The lock and bar had been included to preserve the realism along with the blue which had brought in the impact of polythene patching to keep off the onslaught of rain and wind. Here too original wood had been combined with painted illusive effects.

Nahid is fond of music, reading, chatting with her working women sisters after work, and has a pet myna bird of her own. She has taken part in 30 group exhibitions. She has participated in the "Festival de Cannes" and has taken part in workshops run by Ilse Hilpert, Iftikhar Uddin Ahmed, India-Bangladesh Art Camp and the one run by "Charu Shilpy Parishad". She has won three awards since 1995 including an honorable mention in a group of modern painting exhibition organized by Alliance Francaise, Dhaka in 2002.