October 9, 2004

His paintings speak of heritage, and of builders who believed in a future. Impatient he may be to achieve results in his social work, Jimmy is a painter who works patiently, building canvases layer by layer. The studio is barely furnished and antique tiles gleam from the floors, says

Jimmy Engineer’s studio is a beautiful old white wedding-cake structure gleaming in an avenue of weathered houses. He seldom entertains visitors as he works late at night, and to show me around, he took a morning off from his busy schedule. It is here he lives a private inner life, painting in the night hours after a day filled with the dynamics of social crusading.

Each of the four studio rooms is stacked with large canvases standing five, six and seven feet high. Brushes are laid out in rows on a table, paints, graded by colours, are ready to use and supplies of charcoal and pencils are at hand. There are over two hundred canvases stacked up, and of these, around seventy have been composed and are ready for painting.

At present the artist is keeping them under wraps but takes them out to show me and they are impressive in composition as well as size. Thematically architectural, they are drawn in with incredible detail. Brick and stone work, traditional motifs, classic aspects of architectural design.

Some appear to be a composite of several structures, every corner of the large surface worked with mellow strokes of brown charcoal. I remembered that the artist had trained as a muralist at the National College of Arts, Lahore. Most of Jimmy Engineer’s work to date has been worked on a large scale, encompassing landscape, still-life, history paintings and a series on the partition of the subcontinent.

“I have worked on these present pieces for two years enjoying the process and without pressure to finish them in a hurry. By the end of next year I will have enough work for an exhibition and will take it from there. I see them in my mind’s eye and when I have completed all the canvases, I’ll edit the collection and plan to show one hundred and twenty selected canvases, probably abroad,” reveals Jimmy.

The paintings speak of heritage, and of builders who believed in a future. Impatient he may be to achieve results in his social work, Jimmy is a painter who works patiently, building canvases layer by layer. The studio is barely furnished and antique tiles gleam from the floors. “This is my domain, my solace and my peace. I escape the ups and downs of everyday life and the anguish of social work by painting beautiful things in the peace and quiet of my studio.”

Recently returned from a goodwill mission to Sri Lanka where he hosted six ‘Fun and Food Festival’ days for special children and orphans, as a goodwill ambassador Jimmy Engineer made headlines in the media and earned kudos for Pakistan. Numerous articles were written about him and, reading between the lines, it was clear that he was regarded as something of an enigma, an artist and crusader not trying to solve problems, just trying to put sunshine in sad little lives.

When he initiated the first ‘Fun and Food’ programmed for special children in Pakistan, people looked askance, ‘Special children in five-star hotels?’ ‘How can you call them special?’ Jimmy lambasted them, “You have no special feeling for them, no special love or care. A day spent in a plush hotel having fun and a luxurious meal may not be the solution for the misery in their lives, but this one day will be a ray of sunshine in a dark existence. Perhaps one day of happiness will be etched in their memories with smiles.”

In Sri Lanka, the artist, sponsored by the Union Bank of Pakistan in Colombo, started off at Brown’s Beach Hotel at Negombo, and ultimately held six such events in various parts of Sri Lanka. Over 500 children were entertained with music, dance and food. The response was heartwarming and inspired by these events, during the coming Christmas, five hotels in Colombo and Kandy will entertain 150 mentally, physically handicapped and destitute children.

Offering a glimpse of another world to the deprived, Jimmy is very austere in his habits. He neither smokes nor drinks and his main meal of the day is a bowl of soup. He meditates regularly and walks miles for causes, striding out in shalwar-kamiz in band box order, beard neatly trimmed, eyes full of fire. He has walked extensively in the rural areas and often transfers the landscape on to a canvas.

Born in 1957 at Loralei, Balochistan, Jimmy Engineer had no knowledge of the trauma of partition, neither was it a topic of conversation in his home. Yet his dreams described chaotic scenes that were identified by an old sage as the trauma of partition. Jimmy began to paint these visions and in 1972, gained admission to the NCA, where he was taught by Khalid Iqbal and Colin David, both of whom he remembers with great affection. “Shakir Ali was also a great inspiration and very sensitive to the problems of his students.”

By his own admission a difficult student, Jimmy was a loner, preferring to work at night on great murals of his own choosing but seldom completing class assignments. For three years he continued treading a path of his own at the NCA, then found a large garage to turn into his studio and left the college without completing the final year. He continued to paint with intensity and was a regular award winner at the Annual Punjab Artists Exhibition held at Alhamra.

In 1980, the violent dreams ended as abruptly as they had started. Freed of his obsession he painted still life, landscape, calligraphic work, history paintings and he experimented with abstract art. The most ambitious undertaking of the artist was to paint a mural describing the philosophy of the ‘Javed Namah’ that portrays a journey by Allama Iqbal traveling through the solar system accompanied by Maulana Rumi.

Since the 1970s the artist has received a number of painting awards and, in ’91, he received his first award for humanitarian services. Since then there have been several others, including an award presented by the Waqar-e-Adab in 2003.

Besides the epic canvases worked on at nights, he has exhibited paintings for charitable causes at local hotels and clubs. Commissions support social work and transparencies of his major works have been donated to museums and schools throughout the country. “My way of doing social work,” he says, “is to put people together, I do not collect funds and it has been an effective way of working.”

I ask how he is able to compartmentalize his life so thoroughly, to continue as an active artist with paintings in many countries and collections, and at the same time to be almost a fanatic in his zeal as a social crusader.

“I regard my work as a privilege and my capacity to work as a gift from above. I have a store of energy and indeed when I am tired and discouraged, painting reinvigorates my heart and soul. I give my focus to both areas of my life, and I feel, as long as I work with sincerity I will have the power to continue.”