May 03, 2008

Working in the genre of landscape painting, Mughees Riaz creates aesthetically beautiful works of art motivated by his relationship with his surroundings. Living in Lahore, a fast expanding city teeming with activity, he creates his own place and space. While painting works in sequence, he portrays as his subject, the river Ravi and its surrounds, under diverse conditions of light and atmosphere. At times the surface of the sky takes up almost the entire canvas, the sun filtering through pink tinged clouds.

In other paintings, it is the water that predominates with a changing tempo. Though the scene is inspired by the natural order of the cosmos, Riaz’s landscapes are far from ‘ordinary’, they are visions of the artist’s making and he makes the viewer realise how magnificent the landscape of the river Ravi is, reinterpreting a natural phenomenon to delight the observer.

Landscape painting has been of major interest in the development of art in the Punjab, since Anna Molka Ahmed, who established the Fine Arts Department of the Punjab University in 1940, took her students outdoors to paint for the first time. Khalid Iqbal, whom many regard as the finest landscape artist in the subcontinent, returned from the Slade School of Art, London, with a prize for landscape painting in the ’50s. He joined Anna Molka to teach the first batch of boys admitted to the Punjab University Fine Arts Department, 1955, and initiated a Punjab landscape school of painting which now boasts many superb practitioners.

Riaz, was born in Lahore in 1971. He received his art training from the Punjab University, graduating with a MFA in 1997. Now a faculty member of the Institute of Art and Design, Punjab University, his intention to follow family tradition in art was an early decision and from his childhood, he filled sketchbooks with his impressions of his surroundings. His route to school was through the Shalimar Gardens close to his home, and still each aspect of the garden is etched in his mind.

Riaz first showed his work in public exhibition at the annual Artists Association of the Punjab exhibition held at the Alhamra Cultural Complex, Lahore. Though the subject he portrayed was familiar to observers, Riaz’s integral understanding of the media indicated a technical capability and fluidity of style that has been compared to the approach of Ustad Allahbux. The artist did not merely record a particular place, but portrayed his own individual perception which raised immediate interest in his painting. He soon became an artist to ‘watch out for’. In 2003, recognition of his work came in the form of a National Award, granted at the Pakistan National Council of the Arts 8th National Visual Arts Exhibition.

In the Riaz’s paintings, one often finds boats on the banks of the Ravi, a seemingly personal narrative that creates a sense of scale. Generally fond of animals, in his work buffalos are comfortably inducted, solid animals that introduce a comforting sense of continuity. Crows, his favourite birds, he sees as an attribute of ‘hope’ as they are personified in several cultures. The common creatures, deeply root the artist’s work in reality and contrast piquantly with the spiritual essence of the, at times, abstraction of the delicate colouration imperceptibly merged in breathtaking layers of lustrous radiance.

Riaz is also a portraitist and probing perhaps into the psyche of contrasts and conflicts, he explores the genre of the nude. Here he focuses on the form of a young male, aloof, melancholy, posed in angles of sculpted grace. Again in this sequence the artist uses familiar objects; clay pots, a cat and crows to humanise the unearthly beauty of the subject of his work. Riaz’s nude does not appear as an intrusion into actual life but rather introduces a mood of sad introspection.

Mughees Riaz’s recent works are on display at the Ejaz Galleries, Lahore till May 12th



Mughees Riaz portrays as his subject the river Ravi and its surrounds under diverse conditions of light and atmosphere