Dawn Images

LAHORE: An exhibition of paintings titled The Storyteller by Lubna Jahangir opened at Ocean Art Gallery, Main Market, Gulberg on Wednesday.

A number of art fanciers, artist’s friends, and others came to see the show that featured artworks the artist made during the last three years. Some 30 or so canvases depicting a fine fusion of “Miniaturist Pointillism” gave the paintings a fresh and a wonderful look.

Ms Jahangir told Dawn that she did Masters in Fine Arts Graphic Design back in late 80’s. “ If you look at my work closely you will find layers and layers of meanings and objects.”

The artist is an expressionist. She has adopted an artistic style that departs from the conventions of realism and naturalism and seeks to convey inner experience by distorting rather than directly representing natural images.

In her work forms derived from nature are distorted or exaggerated and colours are intensified for emotive and expressive purposes. She uses black outline to define forms in a stylistic manner and subjective or symbolic treatment of thematic material. Her work does not depict objective reality but rather the subjective emotions and responses that the world arouses in her. She accomplishes her aim through distortion, exaggeration, stylisation and fantasy. Her style of colour application is innovative, unlike the agitated and bold strokes associated with Expressionist movement, she applies the colour as precise minuscule dots in water colours, adding delicate detail to her work.

When asked to define the technique used in her paintings, the nomenclature that she defined for the technique was “Miniaturist Pointillism” - adding that her style is an amalgamation of the western school of painting “Pointillism” and the “Miniature Painting” steeped in centuries old tradition of the East.

Her work evolves from the concept that everything in life is an illusion, how first impressions can be deceptive and when examined closely the simplest of things have mysteries hidden in them, narrating multiple stories in each piece of work.

Over the past few years Ms Jehangir has participated in a number of national and international group shows. The exhibition at Ocean Art Gallery is her third solo and it will continue till April 13.

Originally published in Dawn, April 7th, 2016