WORKS IN OIL

Documentation of Mussarat Mirza’s oil paintings began in the summer of 2021. A small sample of her lifework is presented below. The chronological view showcases paintings from her early academic period onwards, till the present era.

It is near impossible to sustain a linear narrative arc in her work. As an artist Mirza works in several directions at the same time. Her aesthetic appears at once contemporary—in its perspectives, in its tools—and in the same breath it touches into a rare contemplative stillness.

Mirza paints like an old master, at age twelve. Sometimes her light is too strong for logic, and it needs companionable armature. A solitary earthen surface painted in 1988 returns again in 2012, profoundly altered. “I work within limitations,” she shares. Gathered together here, her art offers meaning in the way of riayazat. It is as though the place she seeks to convey on canvas, this is of another time, it is of another station or maqam.

Archival documentation of Mirza’s art remains ongoing.

drawings

“These are drawings on very small pieces of paper, the artist’s private notes to herself. They are remnants of ‘process’, which demonstrate the moment in which an idea occurs. A response to light… to movement inside a doorway, or the silhouettes of women as they wend their way to the shrine… all documented in the artist’s shorthand.”

These observations have consistently been expanded to form the visual framework for so many of Mirza’s paintings. We may recognise in the vignettes, her preference for strongly centralised compositions and a minimalist approach to form.”

Salima Hashmi. Mussarat Mirza: Pages from an Artist’s Diary. Gallery Rohtas 2, 2008

1958 — 1969

WATERCOLOURS

Mussarat Mirza came to watercolours during the 1980s. It began as reprieve from the labour of painting in oils. “I was overcome by a sense of solitariness with oils, and felt the need for some sort of a turning point. I found it almost by accident, when I returned to the watercolours of my childhood years. There was immediate chemistry between the medium and myself.” This affinity soon became method. Her first exhibition, Melody of Landscape (Rohtas Gallery, Islamabad, 1986) showcased the pigments’ delicate transparency; colours flowing across paper, resolving with fresh pace and vibrancy.

Mirza became internationally acknowledged for her watercolours during the following two decades, although very few works are documented. The subtle nuances of tone on tone she developed during this period—and a feel for emergent and dissolving form—these nourished her later work within the medium of oils. One may follow her sustained attendance to light across media.