Miniature Paintings
From my first few days in Guyana, the Kiskadee caught my attention. Yellow is my favorite color so naturally I was drawn to these birds. The Kiskadee having a loud and proud personality I missed in myself as I adjusted to my new surroundings. Inspired by its beauty and confidence, the first miniature I made in Guyana was The Great Kiskadee. My favorite feature of the series of birds is in the faces – the intensity of the eyes and the tiny strokes that create the feathers and hairs.
2. Horses
They say most artists are not content people in the real world. We create our own worlds to compensate – saddened by malnourished horses around town and the litter that consumes the potential of this city, I was inspired to create my own space. Through my painting, I am able to fully experience the sublime beauty in which I find myself submerged. My idea was to make a painting where you can see the flowering greenery that surrounds us all year round with the freedom of wild horses roaming about, and how beautiful it all could be in an ideal world.
3. Blue Bird
Blue Bird and Conversation Tree reference works from the Mughal era – they are essentially “copy paintings” that borrow similar styles and features from those works circa 1585-1593. Blue Bird is taken from a painting that depicts the symbolic Persian poem “Bazina and the Sudden Storm.” The poem is a figurative representation of a king who does not listen to his adviser and goes to war, suffering a historic defeat. The poem, and the accompanying illustration under the same name, has a bird representing the broken human spirit. He sits isolated in a tree, looking forlornly at a storm. The storm represents turmoil and despair. For my piece, I used a blue-grey Tanager from Guyana, locally known as the Blue Saki bird. I painted this piece at a time of despair in my own life and saw myself in the spirit of this bird. The purple mountain became symbolic as the divide between my mind (the storm) and the place I wanted to be … a place of security and shelter in the foreground of the painting where the bird is nestled
In the same way, I based Conversation Tree on the Mughal painting “A Miserable Horse, Man and Dog” circa 1585-1590. The horse and dogs in the Mughal painting reminded me of the aimless animals we see roaming about in the city of Georgetown. The shrubby tree in the painting reminded me of the “Conversation Tree” as locals called it – a small tree in the Bel Air Park neighborhood, surrounded by a modern intersection along the main highway. It often gets banged into by drunk drivers. The picture embodies many of the emotions I feel while driving around town witnessing the carnage to animals due to reckless driving. I chose to make this piece in the Siyah Qalam (Black Monochromatic) because of the sensitivity of the medium and of the subject matter.
5. Hidden Treasures
Hidden Treasures is painted in reference to an illustration of the prophet Elias rescuing Nur Ad-Dahr from the Sea (Hamza-Nama, circa 1570). I was drawn to the depiction of water in the original painting. Thinking of all the unique aspects of Guyana, the black water comes to my mind. I wanted to do a piece that embodied all of these elements in one painting; the black water, the intense vegetation of the jungle, the Hoatzin bird and the Arapaima fish, all in such detail that you would feel in awe of their uniqueness. This painting took several months in the making owing to the detail of the line-work. I wanted to capture the force of the overgrown rainforest – a grandeur canvas of growth and life merged together in a suffocating fashion.
Photography
The photographs in my collection seek to capture the vibrancy of life throughout Guyana. While the paintings are a result of an emotional state of mind, my photographs are simply a physical reaction to things that catch my attention. In this show of work, each element is represented as an “object” in such a way that they feel precious in your hand. From sprouting okra to a dead butterfly on the ground, each image represents something precious and worthy to study in detail. Most of the images are taken in close range so as to create an intimacy with the object and the observer.