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Waves of woodcut

Mokhlesur Rahman's exhibition at "Shilpangan"
26 January 2004, 18:00 PM
LIFESTYLE
By Fayza Haq
26 January 2004, 18:00 PM
Bird- 3, wood cut print on paper
In his recent exhibition at "Shilpangan" Moklesur Rahman had brought in water colour, oil and oil pastel apart from his usual woodcut print. He enjoys every medium specially in which he works but enjoys the print medium as he has his academic training in that in particular. His training under Karen Kunc from Nebraska guided him in particular. He had worked in a workshop that she had conducted in 1995, learning new techniques in the process. Mokhlesur explains that the woodcut is a surface print while etching involves ink going into lines which you then press in order to get out the print. In woodcut, on the other hand, he explains, the ink is on the surface. "As you cut away the wood in woodcut the designs are formed, following the image in mind. You have to decide what tools you have to use and from which angle you are going to cut to bring in the colours, one after another. Sometimes you camouflage the colours below and sometimes you play them up in the game of arranging colours. After cutting you take a print and then you work on it and take a print again. You may have more than one colour in each plate." All the works in this exhibition deal with nature. "It is through loving nature that you love the world around you," says Mokhlesur, "as well as yourselves. Instead of wasting time in destroying nature and life around you can take pleasure in it."

In an oil pastel you find a delicate bird, the black "finge", set in a background of gray, green and black. The paper on which it is painted is itself a dark mossy green. The same bird is repeated in a water colour and it has been done with mauve, blue, green and a touch of red. In another painting we see an eagle with its feathers being done in details in certain portions. The orange of the sunlight in the sky matches with the hues used on the wings and in the grass. A heron is shown in the next work with the surrounding shimmering water being included in the work. The many mustard fields that we see outside Dhaka is shown in yet another painting with its expanse of yellow which runs in parallel with blue and mauve waves.

"Sandy shore" brings in the land and water around the Padma. The prints have been done on bits of paper and then put together carefully. It has beige, brown, blue, gray, silver and black waves in it one enveloping the other. Through the wood textures you see the different colours. In the delineation of birds in another painting, we see that the colours have been poured at will, so that they swirl with one another while depicting three birds. The paper used is local hand-made one. Mokhlesur says that he would love to experiment with lithography too if he had access to the particular stone that is required for it. He says that he is not concerned whether there is a demand for his type of work or not: he enjoys it and so he keeps himself busy with it. He says that painting is like a song: it could be classical, folk or pop as long as it pleases you carry on with it.

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Asked how he had felt about winning the Grand Prize in the 10th Asian Biennale for his print work, Mokhlesur says, "I was pleased to get it at the outset but with it went the responsibility that I would always have to maintain the standard." Apart from painting Mokhlesur does computer designing. He has taken part in more then 20 joint exhibits in Japan, Europe and Bangladesh and has had two solos of his own. The teachers who have moved him the most are Karen Kunc, Rafiqun Nabi, Abdus Sattar, Safiuddin Ahmed and Mohammad Kibira, who taught him how to combine colours, when he was a student. Among the young print makers he likes Rafi Haque and Anisuzzaman.