Text: Nafisa Rizvi
Photography: Courtesy of Canvas Gallery
In the postmodern age, paint has lost much of its elevated status and
is relegated to a neutral agent that must wait for the artist to
infuse it with meaning and emotive content. In contrast, found objects
or materials from everyday life come potently embedded with sensory and
associative histories, making the work of the postmodern artist that
much easier. But in the process of devising, and often gimmickry, we
have forgotten what it’s like to stand in front of a Rothko and allow
its abstraction to embrace us and enjoy what he described as “the
elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea and
between the idea and the observer." But Shireen Kamran comes to us as a
saviour of sorts. Just when we had given up our search for the simple
life -- the inherent passion and expressive grace of impasto and the
reaffirmation of the pre-eminence of planar fields of colour -- along
comes an artist who is unafraid to voice her ambition to invest
nonfigurative art with transcendent content and give us the opportunity
to revel in the private moments of joy that we can share with an
abstract work of art.
Shireen Kamran lives away from her homeland in a remote part of
Canada, uninhabited by people of her own ilk though not alone. Her
foray into art is extraordinary. At the age of forty-something she
decided to take the plunge and join art school, reviving an interest
that she had harboured for many years since she received a certificate
in art in 1976 from Abassin Arts Council, Peshawar. Kamran recalls her
bachelor’s programme to be one of the most wonderful experiences of her
life and says that it was not long before she was able to befriend
most of her teachers since they were closer to her in age than the
students in her class. The fallout of the late entry into art, however,
has been that she finds herself painting with the frenzy of a whirling
dervish. “I work in my studio from 9 am to 9 pm sometimes. I feel the
need to make up for all the years I have lost in which I could have been
doing art”, she says. It is all clearly visible in her paintings –the
animated spontaneity akin to a child bestowed with a shiny new bicycle
interjected by the repose of wisdom and the quietude of age.
