ISLAMABAD: An exhibition of paintings titled Early Days of Spring depicting landscapes of the Arctic during each season of the year opened at Nomad Gallery on Sunday.

Sweden-based Pakistani artist Ubaid Syed brilliantly used striking colours in the 16 works, stroking on canvas the interplay of light and shadow over Lapland - Finland’s northern region - during eight seasons of the year that are unique from each other. His paintings show surreal summer nights when the sun is miraculously visible at midnight in the vast Nordic region.

Syed is an established name in the art world mostly working with acrylics, oil and tempera on canvas.

“His paintings are a mix of nature and art, rich in strokes and vibrant colours, reflecting fascinating possibilities and swathes of lonely landscapes,” Nageen Hyatt, founder and director of Nomad Gallery, said. Colours used in each painting express a different mood and narrative.

“Ubaid’s aesthetic sense is calm, soothing and mature, perhaps showing the environmental and ecological changes. His work serves as inspiration for many emerging artists,” she added.

“This exhibit is my inspiration from Lapland,” Mr Syed said, who is a member of the Swedish Artists’ Organisation. He is an artist in residency at Emma Ricklunds Foundation in Sweden and began doing solo shows in 1998 in Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi and abroad. He has participated in numerous national and international exhibitions.

The artist takes inspiration from Lapland’s wilderness, often described as the space “where heaven touches earth”.

His boldly composed paintings have a soothing quality, demonstrating the influence of light on a landscape and how visual certainties are merely changing optical illusions.

“Midsummer nights, their beauty and diversity have infinite subject matter for an artist and they offer you a symphony, accenting contrasts and bringing you a variety of forms and colours from an almost divinely inspired palette of light and shade. But colour light and space at Lapland presents a romantic disorder,” the artist pointed out.

Mr Syed, who does not believe in traditional styles and art forms, compares art to teleology, adding an artist needs to destroy his own nature to fully comprehend the grand design that manifests in all of creation and creatures. “It is a struggle for imaginative freedom and spontaneity against norms and orders,” he said, adding there is always an element of surprise in nature that transforms me into a curious child and awakens in me, a sense of oneness with the world.

“My art is basically a composition of mixed metaphors, disconnected, random feelings of both related and unrelated images that I come across,” he added.

Published in Dawn, February 22nd, 2021