May 03, 2008

Islamabad-based painter Kamal Hayat’s work, exhibited at Nomad Art Gallery portrays the eternal creative quest of a man to be able to express and communicate both the perceptible and non-perceptible elements surrounding his life. Hayat has used his creative innovation and experimented to portray his perspective and recollections.

A statement made by the painter best describes the concept behind his work: “Since time immemorial man has sought to express himself through powerful images draw on stone, wood, and cave walls in a quest to understand himself and communicate with the external world. I see my work as the continuity of the same quest.” The 32 works on display portray various inspirations and moods of the artist through bold compositions and aesthetic choice of colours.

Currently heading the Poverty Alleviation Project, Hayat is a self-taught artist. Art remains his passion and he always manages to find time to continue his creative activities by participating in various art shows of Punjab Artists Association.

His compositions are experimental and his perspective is local in imagery. The paintings are about fragmented visions of every day life. Most of them are cubic in form and figurative in both bright and lighter hues. The concepts behind each painting is strong as the artist sometimes converges in to melancholy and antipathy, like wishing to kill and kiss in the same breath with a documented variety of expressions and incidents depicting joy, anger, and annihilation. There is a little touch of Picasso in his renditions.

Hayat has used a variety of mediums including pen and ink; acrylics, watercolours, mixed media, paint on canvas and textured papers, and pastels.

His self-assigned task of continuing the creative flight of the cave man, is more difficult in a world where the integrity of expression has been sacrificed at the alter of consumerism. In that sense, he believes that the challenge is to go back before going forward.



Kamal Hayat’s paintings are fragmented visions of every day life