Titled The Colour of Hope, Shereen Aftab’s paintings exhibited at 8B2 come across almost as an ode to pink. Working with colour and abstraction on multi layered surfaces, built up in darks and lights and overlaid with shades of white, off-white, beige, green-grey, the artist works intuitively, allowing instinct to guide her.
There’s an exuberance and playfulness to the paintings, emphasized by the titles. Amongst a series of small works, some of the titles are Amusement Park, Blooming Wild, Rose Coloured Glasses, Ferris Wheel, Pebble Hopping on Sunday; while the large paintings shown here are titled Let There be Rainbows, Festival of Lights and Dreams on a
There’s an exuberance and playfulness to the paintings
Swing. And then, there is bright, luminous pink, splashed liberally across surfaces, sometimes dripping over the layers beneath, or appearing as a base layer overlaid with white. ‘I work on several paintings at the same time. One of the canvases I was working on seemed particularly gloomy and without thinking much, I picked up my brush, dipped it into pink, and slashed it across the painting. That is how this series began.’
When one views the works from a distance, large floral shapes appear within the abstract surface. Often, there are also rows of arches. These recurring motifs stem from childhood memories. Shereen Aftab grew up in Faisalabad, in a colonial style bungalow with large arched verandahs facing gardens cultivated by her maternal grandfather, an avid gardener. Much of the day was spent in these verandahs, where tea with snacks, and meals were served in the company of family and friends. This fascination with flowers followed through her married life, her husband being a committed gardener.
Once she has applied layers of paint, she applies collage in the form of over-painted papers, often from books, and paints over, scratches out lines or motifs using a sharp tool, adds line work and letters, stamps into the surface with hand cut blocks, or enhances and reveals an underlying motif.
Shereen came to a career in art after decades in another profession. Her family life was unusual for the time in which she was growing up during the nineteen seventies, in a provincial city. ‘I had two mothers,’ she says – her mother, a career woman and a divorcee, and her maternal aunt, a single career woman, living in her maternal grand-father’s home. This female self-sufficiency, her nana’s belief in women’s emancipation, and a sense of profes-sionalism led her to a career in medicine, although this decision didn’t come voluntarily.
As a child her exercise books and textbooks were covered with drawings in the margins, and only the fact that des-pite this she excelled in school, redeemed her in the eyes of her teachers. It also made it impossible for her to escape studying science, despite wanting to study art. It was only after qualifying as a doctor in Lahore, then obtaining a doctorate in immunology from the UK and much later, a general dissatisfaction with the work envir-onment at the teaching hospital where she taught and worked in her home city that she returned to working with her hands.
Her entrance into a career in art began with craft, with patchwork quilting and floral wreaths. Later, she establish-ed a business making cards, gift boxes and party favours using hand-made paper and rubber stamps, which had become popular scrapbooking and fine crafts abroad in the early 2000s. But a little over a decade ago, she moved from craft towards art, taking courses with Nicholas Wilton, artist and founder of the Art2Life Creative Visionary project.
This almost accidental discovery through the internet was her turning point. Where she had been hesitant to call herself an artist, she gained confidence working with the instructors, who are practicing artists, experimenting with various mediums and settling on semi abstraction.
As a mature artist in a competitive art market, where buyers gravitate towards what they consider correct or safe genres to collect, and artists often restrict their own impulse to experiment with different themes and techniques, there is a sense of freedom in Shereen Aftab’s work. Both economic stability and maturity have contributed to these qualities. In this third show (her two previous shows were at Oceans Gallery in Lahore and as part of a group show at Tagheer) at 8B2, a gallery in which light flows through the space, the paintings make for a joyful and vibrant display.
Elements from her past career as a crafter appear in the use of repetitive motifs laid out in grids, and the hand cut rubber stamps impressed into wet paint, revealing the layers beneath, combined with spontaneity and a refusal to conform to accepted genres.
‘I work initially without thinking too much. Composition and technique are part of the process but those come later.’
The writer can be reached at: ilona.yusuf@gmail.com
