Lines of Poetry

Against the vast stillness of water, a cluster of dinghies are moored; the horizon where the sky meets the water is bleached-out: this luminous watercolour, typical of the exhibits of the present show, conveys a calm beauty. Anisuzzaman, who is known almost exclusively for his delicate and intricately balanced woodcut prints of buildings or construction materials, has recently been drawn to traditional boats of Bengal of various shapes and sizes. But in his depiction of them they are invariably moored and blended with the riverscape.
Born in Pabna, Anis grew up admiring the beauty and gloom of the mighty river Meghna and its tributaries. The images of rivers and common dinghies that ply on them were etched deep in his subconscious. When he was trying to liberate himself from the rigors of many years of printmaking, he found watercolour and images of boats as key to opening doors to a new horizon. The harvest of his new found language forms the contents of the current show.
Anis loves to capture boats in close-ups. Typically, the muddy banks where the boats are anchored and the horizon in the distance appear to dissolve into each other, rendering a painting almost two dimensional. Most paintings exhibited are thinly painted, intensely observed, sometimes surrealistic, and often they exude an eerie glow. There is a kind of magic about them too —the paintings are poetic, haunting and distinctive.
In an age of virtual reality and cyberculture, Anisuzzaman’s pace is unhurried. His dinghies in rows or huddled in groups, seem like a world unto themselves. They are anchored there with almost no reference to the surrounding environment. At first they look like a monochromatic and photo realistic depiction of boats. A closer look reveals a richly nuanced palette, shimmering with the glow of the twilight. But their message is not ‘less is more.’ It is ‘less is everything.’
Anis’s quest for a new language of expression began in 2012 and in the past two years he seems to have found watercolour the most suitable medium to express himself. His watercolours still display the unmistakable draughtsmanship of his prints. The wetness of traditional watercolour is also absent in his neatly executed works.
But the geometric balance of his earlier work gives way to poetic, amusing and occasionally ominous paintings of the boat series. ‘Verses Written Through Water-18′ is particularly arresting. Done in cool tones and enveloped in a neutral background, the boats appear to exist in a complete vacuum. A sense of mystery pervades a simple and intimately reproduced scene. He seeks to express the pure, poetic beauty of these dinghies in his powerfully simple, contemplative compositions.
A sense of calm meditation pervades Anis’s paintings. He plays with shadows, scale and light. He has an exploratory gaze. He is searching for truth in expression–for pattern, a delicate balance of abstract and representational imagery, and the interplay between and control of understated hues of exquisite colour and form. The spare, minimalist and listless boats also evoke a sense of timelessness.
For him the quality of art is inextricably bound up with emotional honesty. In a Tagorean sense he also feels that a work of art is a mirror image of something that is taking place within one’s consciousness.
In the course of the rediscovery of his self, Anis is enthralled by the poetry and lyricism of the riverine Bangladesh and he has enthralled us too as we leave his exhibition.