KARACHI: Nostalgia has produced some invaluable writings and some fascinating works of the visual arts. Not to be left behind, Shakil Saigol relives his old Calcutta days — the first five years of his life — in the city he was born in. His canvases on display, Calcutta Revisited: a series of paintings through the eyes of a five-year-old, show his remarkable memory and his ability to capture it on canvas.

The self-taught artist doesn’t believe in any ism, as he says when answering the question of an art buff, who thinks that his work falls in the genre of realism but has unmistakable traces of surrealism.

I was at the point of asking him why his work is in light blue and greyish-blue and why it is not sepia-tinted but leafing through his catalogue I find the answer: “Perhaps because I find the blue colour tranquil, calming and sublime. Perhaps it mirrors the fact that I am at peace with myself.”

Be that as it may, the only time another colour appears on his canvases is when he paints leaves, but the green colour doesn’t intrude. It is tucked in a corner.

His wife, Rehana Saigol, is as usual to be found in some of his paintings, but not being a part of his distant memory she appears as she is now.

He paints himself as he happens to be now, but in some paintings he is also there as a boy of five and for that he uses his grandson of the same age as his reference.

Old pictures of the family members – parents in particular — and old maids who worked for the Saigols in Calcutta, are painted entirely from memory.

He claims that his elder siblings strangely don’t remember half as much as he does. His flashbacks are quite effective, but what is more admirable is his penchant for details particularly on the architectural side. The sharpness of his visual vocabulary is no less noteworthy.

In two compositions, both depicting emaciated rickshaw pullers, he has mixed sawdust with oils to paint the floor. For the lungis worn by the pullers he has used gauze. He is himself present in both, looking sad at the plight of the people who have to haul human cargo in one composition and turning his back on the other.

All said, one can say that Shakil Saigol’s work is refreshingly different from what we generally see these days. The exhibition at Canvas will continue till April 5.