KARACHI, May 20: They are young and ebullient. It is only two years back that they passed out from the Arts Council Institute of Arts and Crafts. What drives them in life is their creative urge to interpret nature as they see it. And it is precisely for this reason that an exhibition of their artworks attracted art lovers’ attention on its opening day at the Arts Council Karachi on Monday. The six participating artists are Samreen Idrees, Insha Arham, Samra Babar, Sana Farooq, M. Bahzad and Mohsin Aziz.

Samreen Idrees paints flowers with the utmost affection. This can be gauged by the fact that the colours she employs, despite being loud, seem to be the most important part of the subject, and not its shape or size. Even when she uses watercolor, it is the colours that stand out more than anything else.

M. Bahzad chooses calligraphy to express himself. The young man definitely has talent but goes a bit overboard with his strokes. This causes his work to look a little amateurish. It is not.

Samra Babar comes up with a striking piece in which she brings into play quite a few themes at the same time. There’s a quilt-like object and the sliding zipper takes the viewer into a world within a world.

Insha Arham’s conceptual construing of flowers is quite striking, especially one of the artist’s artworks reminds the viewer of a famous Jaun Elia quatrain in which the poet implores his readers not to try and own a flower by plucking it from its stem.

Sana Farooq paints birds and does so reasonably well.

Mohsin Aziz is probably the one artist in the group who uses his imagination without feeling inhibited. His depiction of a marbles’ playing hand is impressive mainly because of the way he has painted the hand, teasing the viewer to recognise the social stratum of the person he is trying to depict. Intriguing stuff!

The exhibition will continue till May 22.