KARACHI: What happens when the heart, thought to be a potent metaphor for romantic curiosity, is used as a symbol of creative urge? It allows one to take back the heart to a stage where the tussle between reason and imagination is in its initial, pure phase. Artist Ambreen Qureshi, an exhibition of whose artworks titled Only from the Heart can you Touch the Sky that is under way at the Art Chowk Gallery, has done exactly the same.

For her, it appears, it is the joy of the creative process along with, not excluding, the seamless employment of metaphors that is at the centre of the frames that she fills with shades, hues and images.

Colours are the key component of the artist’s pursuit here. The artist knows they have a language of their own –– readily communicable at that. Mind you, every artist does that, but most of them do it to reveal their inner self, which makes it difficult for the viewer to decipher the position from where they’re trying to reach a wider audience. Not with Ambreen. With her, colours look the viewer in the eye, and the moment they get engaged, a conversation begins.

It happens from the very first piece ‘Blue Horizons’ where the medium grabs attention in no time, and in such a way that the message takes a back seat. Not that the message is not important. It is. But for the artist, art takes precedence over everything else. After all, art is life.

Gradually, things become more understandable in terms of the content. Most of the titles of the exhibits are in Urdu.

This goes to show that Ambreen is rooted in her soil. While her statement, which is pretty much about ‘the spontaneity of watercolours’ is in English, the rootedness in her paintings is readily detectable. ‘Qatra-i-Shabnam’, ‘Toofan-i-Sehra’ and ‘Khushian’ are paintings (or phrases and words) that the viewer will easily find identifiable on social and cultural levels.

Speaking of culture, her tribute to the singer, the late Amjad Sabri, is heartfelt and poignant. It comes right from the heart.

The exhibition concludes on Jan 16.

Published in Dawn, January 5th, 2020