‘The Passion: Harmonised’ on display from 20th

LAHORE: Professionally an urban planner and economist but born artist in her own right, Erum Ashfaq, is displaying her creative artwork at the National Art Gallery of the Pakistan National Arts Council (PNCA) from June 20.

The solo exhibition appropriately titled “The Passion: Harmonised” displaying her 34 latest landscape and heritage buildings paintings will continue till June 27. In a short span of just nine years, Erum Ashfaq has come a long way to establish herself as an accomplished artist who has participated in a number of solo and group arts within the country and also abroad since 2010 when Nayyer Al Dada provided her first opportunity to display her artwork in his Nairang Art Gallery. It was a profound effect of her powerful strokes and use of colours that made the viewers fully approve and appreciate her artistic skills although she had not got formal education in arts from any formal art institution. She has done Masters from University of Engineering and Technology in Urban Planning and in Economics from Punjab University.

She drives her palette from intricacies of feelings and manifests them in colours. Her miraculous use of colours and delicate strokes give a never-ending depth to her paintings which makes the viewers having sense of being at that heritage building. She mainly uses light and shadows to express the contrast of life, of happiness and grief, day and night, the combination of nature that makes perfections. The artist gives variety to her canvas; her happiness is always roses, sorrows and broken walls with dying daylight. Her pivotal point of painting is certainly an afternoon as she assertively says “afternoon is the most powerful time of a day, it lies on verge of a living and dying day, this time is gloomy and so is unfathomable, the time depicts a moment where happiness departs and sadness sets in”. Heritage buildings are Erum Ashfaq’s centre of interest to paint and she is always obsessed with old historical and cultural buildings.