Of Stars and More
Photos: Prabir Das
Arif Ahmed's passion for paintings and love for cosmological world have turned him into an artist, who had his first solo exhibition titled Science Inspired Paintings at Drik Gallery recently, organised by Unmad.
Ahmed has always been a creative person. As a child, he loved making painting and wanted to become an artist. At the same time, he would spend hours and hours looking at a star or planet in the night sky or delving into the detail of the dramatic images from the Hubble space telescope.
"Honestly I wanted to study Astro Physics, but I ended up studying Applied Physics and Electronics in Dhaka University," he says.
This exhibition, which featured 58 paintings made on acrylic and mixed media on canvas, was an attempt to merge his two different areas of interest into one. A fair representation of a creative young crowd confirmed that he has been successful in doing that.
From auroras to celestial bodies in deep space, his paintings made the visiting crowd look off into deep space, outside our galaxy- a world that remains invisible to the naked eyes.
Ahmed's careful use of colours and the eye-catching details in the artworks of nebula, supernova, Andromeda galaxy, northern lights, wormholes, space explosion and more, made it hard to believe for many that the man never had any kind of formal training in painting.
From Astro Physics, through arts to 3D animation, Ahmed's journey has been quite interesting.
"I started my venture with 3D animation back in 1995, when the concept was not quite popular in Bangladesh," he continues.
Self-learning is the best learning- that is the mantra he believes in. "During that time, online resources, books or tutorials on 3D software were not available like now. So it was very difficult for me to explore 3D modelling, animation, lighting and rendering techniques. I decided to choose the hard way and learn them by myself. I also shared my knowledge with others through performing professional training on 3D animation."
His hard work paid off, when he started one year of diploma in 3D animation in Daffodil Multimedia for the first time in Bangladesh. "Besides, opening my own 3D Animation research centre called AAVA 3D was a milestone for me," he explains. "My goal is to make a better future for 3D animation in Bangladesh and make it easy to learn for the 3D enthusiasts. My research centre gives support to many local firms to develop their 3D animation business by delivering technical support and with professionals. I am planning to extend the area of 3D animation learning through the website aava3dtutorial.com, which is the first e-learning site of 3D animation in our country."
But what about his plan with paintings?
"For my next exhibition I have something different in my mind," he continues. "I want to work in nano art, an art discipline that is already very popular around the world."
With that Ahmed plans to work towards his goal of making science inspired paintings popular among the young art lovers of Bangladesh.
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