Islamabad : An exhibition of latest landscape paintings by internationally acclaimed artist Ubaid Syed opens at Tanzara here today (Thursday).
Titled ‘The Midnight Sun,’ the exhibition offers captivating images of the local environs, coloured by the austere beauty of the landscape. The paintings take direct inspiration from ‘The Lapland’– the land of the midnight sun, eight seasons, and where heaven touches earth. The artist finds this terrain, which is located far north of Sweden and Narvik inside the Arctic Circle, extraordinary in its variety of form, light and colour, hence providing him with vistas that he translates onto his canvases with amazing skill and dexterity.
Currently based in Sweden, Ubaid states, “Midsummer night at Lapland and Narvik with their beauty and diversity have infinite subject matter for an artist; they offer a symphony accenting contrasts and bring you a variety of forms and colours from an almost divinely inspired palette of light and shade. Form, colour, light, and space at Lapland and Narvik present a romantic disorder. There visual certainties are only a kind of optical illusion; there is always a visual barrier which one can only metaphorically overcome to be able to experience the grate multiplicity of line, contour, colour and light that seem to vie with the mysteries of space and distance. It is like touching the untouchable.”
The gallery’s curator Noshi Qadir termed Ubaid’s paintings as well balanced and flowing with energy. “The rich colour palette and bold compositions help create brilliant effects, making the painting aesthetically pleasing.” The exhibition will continue till April 4.