ISLAMABAD: When Rashid Butt, the country’s renowned calligraphist, likes every single painting in an exhibition, the work must be good.

Rashid Butt admired the approaches, colours and compositions of Zulfiqar Ali Zulfi’s paintings at an exhibition that opened at Tanzarar Gallery on Friday evening. More than 30 paintings in oil on canvas of sunsetting on open rural spaces and rising on cityscapes have been put on display. The show will continue till February 20.

The winner of Pride of Performance, Zulfi is a realist painter but his paintings, landscapes or cityscapes are more than an imitation of what is seen. He has the magic of capturing the essence of the vignette that he replicates on canvas. Beyond realism, he understands his subject matter well, be it a rustic scene or an urban setting, misty horizons or cattle out in the open fields. The artist renders such images with complete dexterity.

“These are cheerful landscapes. Not many painters have such a control over light and shades in a balanced perspective,” said Islamabad-based architect Shahid Khan. He believed that there were a handful of landscape artists around and Zulfi was one of them besides Kaleem Khan of Balochistan.

Zulfi’s paintings take their inspiration from a direct observation of nature. He uses a rich palette that brings a pictorial richness to his canvas. His imagery is idyllic and delightful. Those who visited his show described him as a master of capturing seasons and times of the day.

In his landscapes, one could truly feel the breeze and smell the grass. The foggy winter morning scenes were cold and the sunny landscapes warm and radiant.

For Karen Norris, the paintings were like looking out of a window. “Every image takes you to that specific place. These are very captivating,” said Norris, who got a pretty good perspective of Lahore city from the show.

Zulfi has several solo and group shows to his credit and his paintings are in major collections home and abroad.

These latest works took the artist a year to finish. “I have tried to shift to other subjects but it’s impossible to escape nature, the winter mist, autumn, spring, the chirping birds,” Zulfi told his guests, explaining how his fascination with nature compelled him to paint every day.

He admires works by prominent landscape painter, late Khalid Iqbal, as well as the 18th century English romantic painter John Constable.

Published in Dawn February 7th , 2015

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