Eight-day glass painting exhibition titled "Floral Fantasy" featuring folk motifs by Aneela Sardar starts at Lok Virsa, Garden Avenue here on Sunday. Aneela Sardar, a natural scientist by education, has chosen the medium of glass painting to express her creativity.
As an aesthetic, while she loves colours, the botanist in her has an even deeper appreciation for the subtle differences among leaves and petals. Her lines are strong, her colours are lively and her imagery is impressive. The present exhibition, which will open for public till January 23 daily from 10am to 8pm, features floral patterns and cultural motifs inspired by a range of ethnic textile prints. While, use of gold leaves and semi-precious stones has remained common to decorate the glass paintings, Aneela has used more mundane material to enhance the visual impact of her paintings.
The standard of the art on display clearly demonstrates how much the artist has gained from the panorama of folk life around her. Addressing the ceremony as chief guest well-known painter Mansoor Rahi said that exhibitions create a relationship and understanding between the artists and the citizens and media can play a meaningful role in promoting different art forms including the folk painting. He said that besides projecting art, they should also encourage artists through various incentives. He lauded the Lok Virsa efforts in reviving, preserving and promoting different forms of art and culture. He also asked the Lok Virsa management to open opportunist for the budding artist and showed his intentions to send his students to Lok Virsa to carry out a specific assignment on folk motifs of Pakistan.
Later, Executive Director Lok Virsa, Khalid Javaid informed about steps taken by Lok Virsa in documenting and preserving different components of the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of Pakistan. Quoting examples, he said that Lok Virsa established the first state museum of ethnology at the federal capital, popularly known as Heritage Museum, depicting living cultural traditions and lifestyles of the people of Pakistan.
Elaborating about the intangible culture, he said that Lok Virsa has set up a video archives housing over 5000 hours of professionally recorded videos depicting cultural traditions, folk art and musical traditions, artisans-at-work, rituals, festivals, etc.
A sound archives has also been created with over 20,000 hours of recorded tapes of authentic cultural materials through village to village field surveys and documented scientifically as a storehouse of the nation's heritage for posterity. This is the largest single archive of Pakistan's intangible heritage anywhere in the world, he added.
Khalid Javaid said that Lok Virsa started recordings during the days of gramophone and now these valuable materials are being converted into digital format. He said that Lok Virsa is in search of folk painters who can transfer the centuries old traditional folk motifs in different crafts into an art form through any medium of art.
ED Lok Virsa appreciated the work of the young painter Aneela Sardar. He said that she has beautifully depicted traditional floral motifs in carpet, Rilli and Ajrak through her talent.
Addressing the ceremony, Professor Tasneem Abbas appreciated the efforts made by Aneela Sardar in depicting and portraying floral motifs in such a beautiful way. She said that the artist, who is basically a botanist, has an aesthetic sensitivity which has been reflected in her art. She chose the glass medium for expression of her art.
Painting on glass is a remarkable art form. Glass pore democratic of the visual arts, bridging the gap between folk and fine art. The art has been incorporated into stained glass windows and used by prominent artists like Gainsborough and Klee. But amateur artists have practised it more frequently. The beauty of these paintings leaves one dazzled as both the medium of glass provides the painter with something that no other mediums can - the light effect.
For centuries, Gothic churches and other hallowed institutions have inspired awe in us because of their remarkable use of glass paintings. Today it is as popular as it ever was. It will be difficult to give a precise date of origin of glass paintings but history says that it became quite a rage in Italy during the Renaissance. They were in the miniature style and were found in altars of churches. Their themes were scenes from the Bible. In Austria this art form gained more sophistication and slowly it spread all over Europe. It did not take this at form much longer to reach Asia.
Glass painting in the Sub-continent is a comparatively recent phenomenon; it emerged in the Sub-continent at around 18th century. The Chinese merchants settled around the coastal regions of the state influenced styles of painting. Soon this style was internalised by the artists and was experimented with. The Pakistani glass paintings are characterised by their bright colours and ornamental nature.
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