When nature’s beauty turns one into a mystic

The beauty of nature has complete power to bring out the mystic in all of us and open our eyes to supernatural vistas.

This was amply proved at the opening of the week-long exhibition, ‘Tantalising Mysteries’, at the Clifton Art Gallery on Wednesday evening. The exhibition is based on 44 paintings of the landscape of what was formerly known as the Northern Areas but has been rechristened Gilgit-Baltistan.

The Lahore-based artist, Fauzia Khan, being greatly influenced by the scenic beauty of the place, has assumed a metaphysical disposition. As she says, “I can see ‘souls’ carrying out the order of God in the area.”

Her painting, ‘Breaking Silence’, an oil-on-canvas, is a surrealistic representation of the area, with a brook flowing in between two mountains and an ethereal figure on the bank of the brook. This figure, according to her, is the ‘soul’ or spirit that is keeping watch over the area on behalf of The Almighty.

Similarly, another of her work, ‘Autumn is My Season’, is a dream-like representation of a river flowing through a valley, with an angel-like apparition. Apart from these, most of her works are a beautiful exercise in realism. The meticulous paintings depict the landscape of the area. One of her works, ‘Heaven’s Vistas’, is a winsome depiction of a lush green mountainside interspersed with cottages.

The exhibition is such a refreshing relief from the stuff being purveyed by the town’s highly commercialised art galleries as “modern art”. Besides, her works are also a precise cultural and anthropological representation with portraits of women in the typical Hunza attires, complete with the embroidered headgears women of the area wear. There’s one of such an attired woman playing the flute by a river bank. Then there’s one of Hunza belles in their native attires.

Fauzia Khan says she gathered her art from keen observation which she considers a part of the natural gift she has for painting. She considers nature her intrinsic tutor and reveres Allah Almighty as “the greatest artiste of all”, who through nature brings peace and purity and trains her eye to discover the unexplained mysteries of the world.

Khan earnestly believes that there’s more to the northern regions of Pakistan than meets the eye, that it holds many mysteries and depths of a mystical nature that are waiting to be discovered. This is a tribute to the mystical side of her being.

Fauzia Khan, a fine arts graduate of the Government Postgraduate College for Women, Samanabad, Lahore, has to her credit 55 solo shows, both in Pakistan and overseas. The exhibition was inaugurated by MNA Faryal Taplur. It is an absolute must-see for the aesthetically inclined and lasts up until February 14. It’s not to be missed.