They say that the best way to capture the soul of a place is to take photographs because they speak a thousand words. But ask artist Kamal Hyat and he will tell you otherwise. He has captured lahore — the inner city, its buildings and its people — in his canvas.
His first exhibition in India is titled The lahore Series and he told us that it is his way of paying homage to the place he calls home. “I was in Islamabad for 12 years and now I have come home and plan to stay here till the end of my life,” he said. The thought of painting his “favourite city” came to him when he had a few foreign friends visiting him. They wanted to see the inner city and when he was taking them around, he discovered several little details that he had never paid much attention to before. “That prompted me to see and observe the place and therefore I felt like documenting it,” he said. One will find simple yet beautiful paintings of a market place, buildings and people in his works.
There is something lively and unique about his works — the pictures are vibrant and portray a slice of life in lahore. The artist fondly showed us a painting — of a barber at work, under a tree with his humble stool holding his equipments. He told us that a barber, very much like the man in the picture, sits in front of his house in lahore.
From what we saw at the exhibit, we can say that Hyat is an observer of the little things that we see so often, that it ceases to make a mark in our memory. If you visit the art gallery at India International Centre, you will find a painting of a boy in a yellow shirt, sitting with his back towards you, perhaps enjoying nature. There is also an entire wall which displays just three paintings of people. One portrait shows a man wearing John lenon glasses, probably blind, while two paintings depicted women — one wearing blue and the other, green.
The artist shared a story behind the woman in green. “One day, I was at a small restaurant in lahore and then this woman walked in. She was wearing a big, beautiful green hat which was an uncommon sight there. And she had blonde hair and was wearing a green dress, too. She sat at a corner of the restaurant and had her meal. Two days later, I decided to relive that memory so I painted her,” said the self-taught artist. The striking feature of the painting is the emerald green eyes of the lady. “Her eyes were greenish but may be not of the particular shade as in the picture,” he added.
We came to know that he does not have models for his paintings. The artist explained how he paints his portraits, “I observe a face and its structure and it stays in my mind. Then I might like a dress that someone else might be wearing and combine them together.” He let us know that some of his paintings have a story behind it while others are simply fragments of his imagination.
It is perhaps because he is self-taught that his works do reflect any school of art. Hyat has always loved painting and has been painting since he was 14-years-old. But for his livelihood he joined the financial sector and went to England to pursue it. “Even during all that time, I continued to paint and sketch but nobody knew. Now, people are surprised and they keep asking why I never showed the artworks. There were very few close friends who knew. Aur agar kisi ko pasand ata tha to de deta tha (And if someone happened to like a painting I used to give them away),” said the artist and softly added, “Once I have finished a painting I am no longer interested in it.”
He believes that once a painting is complete, it is no longer his. It belongs to whoever likes it. The fact that Hyat paints only when he likes to sit down sets him apart from his contemporaries who dwell upon a painting series for weeks and months. “It takes me about five days to complete one painting but then again, I do not work in sequence. When I get bored at times, I let it be for a while and take it up later,” he said.
Amidst cheerful and happy pictures at the exhibition we come across one titled Terror Strikes the City and it has black birds on a red backdrop and faces of two people half covered by their hands. We discussed with Hyat about the relevance of the painting in light of the recent terror strike in Paris and whether the picture depicted terrorism in Pakistan or a symbol for every affected country. Hyat said that as far as the emotions of that particular painting was concerned; it was a result of the Peshawar and lahore school massacre by the Talibans. “They killed over 300 schools students and it was that time that I painted this. And I finished it in one day because it is one of those paintings that you do at once or do not do at all,” he explained.