October 26, 2002

It seems that there is much potential in Ihsana Sultana’s work if she allows herself the liberty to follow her instincts. Her canvases on display at the National Sailing Centre in Karachi show signs of awakening and discovery.

The first few works, realistic in style and of subjects in natural settings can, at first, be easily dismissed as too conventional, stereotyped images of the Thar woman in a desert, or a village woman in the mountains, et al. These are followed by an image of a flat, unconvincing tiger against an equally unconvincing foliage and then a bland, lifeless still life of blue ceramic ware against a stark black background.

The said works have in common uninspired compositions, with subjects dead in the centre of the frame and slight differentiation in the foreground and background. The treatment, unfortunately, reflects a lack of interest.

With the barest of modelling, some areas seem to literally fall flat; the paint is applied in a thin monotone wash giving the overall dry effect of poster colours rather than oils. Similarly, the brushwork lacks in variation, a mere filling in of areas of colour, the foliage is more like cut-out paper leaves, with the overall effect of having being painted from photographs rather than from life. The drapery too reveals no attempts at shading, the drab effect enhanced by the absence of any form of convincing lighting as in the amateurish still life set in black — read plain unremitting black with no nuances or tones.

However, peer closer, and there is something about the haloey incandescent atmospheric quality of the desert horizon, of the sky and earth merging in the Thar Woman in the Desert, a certain feathery softness glimmered here and there. There is something glidingly elegant about the voluminous mass of red clothing of the Thar woman even though it is flat centre, the red, effulgent bright, holds together the painting in an abstract way in a design of contrasting brights and darks.

Glimmerings of promise, one would think, The Potter, set in white, proves the hunch, as the exhibition thankfully picks up. The painting is a perfect juxtaposition of linear shapes, a carefully balanced composition broken up by complimenting lines, disposition of areas of varied shapes in nuances of white yet hinged together by the starkly contrasting tan of the potter’s limbs and face.

It works more as a design of abstract shapes and colour as in miniature art rather than as a realistic study. The plastic paint quality with its tactile appeal, applied in layers, adds to the overall haunting effect of a lost timelessness, the stooping neck of the potter, the curve of his head, the light, all adding to the sense of light and misty softness.

In its quiet beauty, hovering somewhere between reality and abstraction the work exudes an eternal sense of timelessness. It seems that when Sultana gives up her attempt to depict reality, allowing herself to rejoice in reducing things to flat applications of line and colour, she is at her best .

The monochromatic beiges, pivoted around two pale slithers of orange in A Child Behind a Ladder, again is successful as a play of elements and colour where the child, instead of being rendered as the main subject of a study with the usual foreground and background becomes merely an element in a pattern exuding a soft poignancy.

Confidence is apparent in the handling of the Dogs in the Woodland. In the linear composition, sinuous lines of the dogs’ limbs, their muscular angularity and in their beautifully forlorn languid faces all reflected in the setting, the canvas set in the feathery brushwork of the foliage exudes a beautiful sense of brooding stillness.

The other still lifes too reflect this disturbingly still, haunting appeal of time frozen. These speak of a reality which, on the surface, may appear normal and realistic but is too still and somewhat strangely abstracted in colour and shapes to be real. The pears in one such still life are too green and flat, the backdrop too murkily dark brown, yet the flatness works here to give a sense of unease and as elements of a design rather than as a failed attempt at reality. In the final analysis, it seems that perhaps the best thing to do for Ihsana Sultana would be to follow her instinct for design and abstraction that could help her move away from realistic painting.