Fleeting Moments in Watercolour

Mustafa Zaman

Hamiduzzaman is basically a sculptor. But since his early days as an artist, he has remained faithful to a particular media that many don't consider to be worth pursuing after they pass out of art college.

Watercolour is a media that has a certain magic of its own, yet many consider it to be of a lesser media compared to oil and acrylic. Hamiduzzaman is an exception.

Though his art show has its share of paintings that could be dubbed as perfunctory attempts, his fidelity to the media is unquestionable. He also shows what he can do with it in many of his works. The manner with which he manipulates his brush, and his way of applying colour and shapes while tackling a fleeting moment that allows a scene, through his painting of course, to be depicted in a gesture of sorts. What he reveals to the eye of the beholder can at best be called an impression of the real.
The artist in this particular solo exhibition did not pay much attention to his manner or style for that matter.

Side in Veil

He delved into several subjects. Figures, portraiture and landscape, these are the subjects that figured in this show that was inaugurated on June 24, 2003 at the Gallery Shilpangan.

His portraiture is highly stylised, in this respect they certainly stand apart from his other forays. And there is a series of small abstract paintings that also seems anomalous as the show appears to have been designed on the subject of scenery and glimpses of people's life. If it is considered a showcase of a relay of landscapes, the paintings of people that inhabit the areas depicted fit in well, but the abstract works and the portraitures seem a bit out of key with the predominant theme.

The high point of the show is the simplified and atmospheric rendition of the land that the artist recently visited. As a sculptor the artist was invited to contribute one of his works that would be installed in the Sancheong sculpture garden in the city of Ginju in South Korea. There he spent one extra day after finishing the sculpture he was working on. This whole day he spent to stoke his passion for watercolour.

Figure in Red

Many of these watercolour have ended up in the show, and many have this fresh look that is imbued with such loveliness that it has almost elevated to the images of sublime quality. But not every painting reached this end.

Hamiduzzaman has also presented a lot of indigenous scenery. In dealing with them, he sometimes applied the same acumen and minimalism that he did while working on the hilly areas of Sancheon. His idea of putting a scenery in shorthand is borne out of the eye he has for the real and here his understanding of the meditative Chinese watercolour plays a definite role. Perhaps this factor has made him the capturer of fleeting lights sweeping a particular landscape.