Of boats, birds and beautiful women

The horseman, Oil on canvas

"The artists who have influenced me are obviously Zainul Abedin and Quamrul Islam who were my teachers and taught me how to paint by guiding my hand and correcting my colouring, praising and admonishing where necessary. They remain my ideal and I try to follow their path. As for artists of the earlier times, Van Gogh and Matisse remain my favourites, specially their decorative works. As a child I tried to bring in their composition and colours in my paintings."

Asked about the news elements in his current exhibition, Qayyum Chowdhury said, "There is nothing remarkably new: it is a continuation of the past. The themes remain the same: flowers, birds, butterflies, women, paddy fields, rivers, skies the countryside as seen in simple geometrical shapes and buoyant colours. I try to bring in the rhythm of life in the Bangladeshi countryside and I'm always preoccupied by the local landscapes with the turquoise, mustard, russet, emerald, ruby and other vibrant colours. I make notes in a diary before I work and later develop on them.

However, there are paintings of 2003 which critics have termed as fiery and angry, and different from the works done before 2000 where I brought in Bengal folk motifs and dealt with the alluvial plains , boats and rich Bengal visuals of red-green-blue. The new image is compassionate yet critical of our times and I've termed them 'Flowing time' which critics read as 'Dark Time', the ferocity of which is said to chill your bone and snatch one away from any complacency. The nostalgia of the past is absent but looks into the future, keeping the Liberation War of 1971 in mind."

Talking about why it took him long to have a solo exhibition, Qayyum Chowdhry said, " It took me five years. I like to take as much as two months to finish a canvas. I want the work to be perfect and finished in every way. I do detailed work and that is time consuming. I have nearly 70 oils, drawings and water colours in this exhibit."

Touching on whether his illustration work affected his paintings, Qayyum Chowdhury said, " Not at all; on the other hand my paintings affect my illustration. I've been doing graphic designing from 1952 and this year, during Ekushey book fair, I did 35 book jacket designs."

Dwelling on whether the young Bangladeshi artists were forgetting their roots in their attempt to reach out for the post-modern effect, Qayyum Chowdhury said, " The young artists feel that painting is an international language : it has no bars and should be understood by everybody, anywhere in the world : they do not confine themselves to boats, birds and beautiful village women . Sometimes this has good effects and at times bad."

In "At the end of the day", an oil on canvas, one saw three fishermen returning home from work. The face, bodies and limbs were in rectangles of purple, blue, green and shades of brown, while the nets were in variations of gray, touched with royal blue. "Whirlpool" depicted a woman with her sari blown aside, and her legs sunk in the treachery of nature. Flowers, birds and boats were carefully included in the composition at the back and front. The dominant colours were green, blue, ochre, red and pink. The colours were throbbing with emotion. "The last spring", oil on canvas, had little birds in yellow and blue along with decorative representations of trees and leaves on a background of orange, burnt sienna and other russet colours. One of the paintings dealing with the freedom fighters brought in the Bangladesh flag along with the soldiers with their red badges of courage tied on their forehead, wearing singles and flourishing bayonets.

Qayyum Chowdhury has had numerous solo and joint exhibits in USA, Germany, India, Pakistan, Japan, Hong Kong, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Middle East and Bangladesh. His awards include Ekushey Padak (1986), Sultan Padak (1999), Liepzig Book Fair Prize for book illustration and the Imperial Court Prize in Teheran Biennale (1966).