Pleasantly delicate and understated expressions appeared in Shireen Kamran paintings in a solo exhibition at Canvas Gallery, Karachi. Titled "Seeking Nothingness" the collection of paintings in subtle tones reflected the matters related to soul. Through paintings artist tried to find answers to questions regarding soul, its presence and absence, its depth, its parts and its existence.
The abstract paintings in dull colours produced dark and melancholy atmosphere. Having palette of pale blues, dull reds, greys and greens gave an ancient look to the paintings.
Every soul has a personality and undergoes various experiences in life from anxieties, aspirations to joys and achievements. But one can feel uneasiness in the paintings an urge to find something and to define something.
The paintings were a diverse set to accomplishments and failures. She represented her feelings symbolically within colours and abstract patterns. In a complex but significant way she portrayed the theme underneath the paintings materials.
"The Ocean of the Soul", "Soul Matters", "Wanderings", "Presence and Absence" and "Grey People" were some of the titles of her paintings that reflected the theme and mood of her paintings more clearly.
She depicted the tension between the social role and the inner soul of a person. She showed a divine affiliation of soul with the world through colours. She tried to narrate her point of view in many forms and shapes with colours in a conceptual way. When the colours mixed or merged with each other they depicted a meaningful picture without lines and shapes.
The paintings were based on mixture of unintentional blur objects and figures, which totally muddled or blended with colours. The paintings had no obvious images but yet they portrayed the reality of everyday life in an abstract and unexplained form.
Shireen seemed to imprison the colours in her canvas and concealed them in different hues in an uncontrolled and unplanned way just like the hollow space of vast limitless blue sky with multiple shades of blue.
It was like colours were living their own life without empowerment of shapes and fear of boundaries and lines but just freedom. This limitlessness made layers of colours on each other and created a new meaning of colours, shades, textures, tones and shapes. All the colours and shapes represented a soul in various moods and situations.
Dull but pleasing and soothing her paintings are alive with texture and soul.
The paintings illustrated in shades of pale yellow like evening, and dull blue and greys like night but these shades gave a feeling of soothes and calmness and depicted a ray of hope that clinched the mind and soul.
Some of the paintings look like pages of children's painting book. As if a child wanted to draw and paint his/her feelings whether joys or sadness but don't know how to express the feelings.
This simple style of paintings attracted viewers and they saw their childhood in them thus a connection of soul to a certain time period. The creation of artistic generalisation and not in representing reality in its concrete form was the beauty of her paintings. The imaginative assimilation of reality and philosophy in images made her work more appealing.
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