S M Fawad's paintings in bright and lively colours portrayed his feelings as well as documented past historical memories and present times in a solo exhibition titled "Realism" at Artciti Gallery, Karachi. In a realistic painting forms are clearly marked and the images are sharp and lively. While going through the paintings at the show one felt that Fawad has a realistic approach towards realistic painting.
The new work by him revealed he has improved his skills regarding technique and colour sense. It was due to hard work, continuous practice and also by studying masters' work in the realistic painting genre, which brought change in his work. He is interested in architecture complexities as well as its simplicity which compliment and highlight each other side by side. He has chosen minimum colours and worked in soft tones, so that the attention of the viewer does not divert from the subject.
He mostly used earth tones and its various shades with the reflections of objects, light and shadows. His canvas mainly contained scattered traditional buildings and architecture reflecting shadows in evening sunlight, these shadows some times crept into the dark making a dramatic situation. His paintings gave sight of the place and introduction to our heritage.
Working in oils he gave meaning to forgotten world; the old buildings portraying the lifestyle of the people of the past telling stories of their times as years passed by without any change in their environment. He portrayed places, houses, dwellings, without plaster brick walls knitted in a harmonious manner creating sombre tranquillity. The images he painted are both magical and cold, showing the grim situation around us regarding our heritage.
The scenes, which dominated his canvases, had the beauty of ochre brick houses with balconies, windows and doors standing alone without any human activity. Fascinated by the old Karachi architecture his paintings mainly depicted the yellow brick walls of old houses, dusty windows, fractured columns and balconies. Some times the majestic red sandstone walls also adorned his paintings. Thus his paintings spoke of an age of grace and splendour.
Mostly he picked a small portion of a building to be captured in his paintings so that he can concentrate on the details of the architecture and the story behind the walls. His subject's doors, windows, balconies, tiles, jalousies and walls provided a peek in the past to the viewers.
In his current series he also painted caged pigeons, a motorcycle parked against a front door, a bicycle standing between plants, a rusted door with a big old lock and a wall having blue tiles with some Arabic words written on it to change his mood of paintings which basically captured old architectural sites. He added these new objects in his paintings to make his work different from the previous one.
He added a serene and aesthetically pleasing touch to his paintings by adding foliage to them. This time he painted different potted plants, herbs and shrubs - a painting of twisted money plant and another one showing morning glory intertwine with the balcony gave a lively look to the abandoned architecture.