Womanhood in all its glory

Artwork by Mohammed Jalal Uddin

"I admit that most of my paintings deal with women. Searching for the reason for this, I realise that I find the female form attractive, apart from flowers and trees around me. It is not as if subjects like the Liberation War did not move me but I felt I could best express myself in pensive female forms. I do hope some time in future to deal with ideas like the Language Movement and the Liberation War, in one form or another. Right now I want to please the viewer with presenting the beautiful curves and colours that we find in our women in the countryside," says Jalal Uddin.

Tune of spring depicts a young woman, boldly dressed in a bright red sari. "I try to present the hopes, dreams and frustrations of the woman in the curling, swirling lines around her. The folds of her clothes and her flying hair represent her restless mind and heart," Jalal Uddin says. Another painting is similarly an everyday event: a woman helps another to finish doing her makeup by putting a teep on the forehead. This is a simple incident, yet it has been delineated in a splendid manner, showing friendship, understanding and helpful nature of the common people in the countryside.

In the morning shows two women sitting and discussing a problem. The women are seen sitting on steps and on the two sides we see mud walls and windows, while on top is a thatched roof. "Just as I enjoy depicting people from the countryside so I love to paint scenes from the countryside too," says Jalal Uddin. Another painting depicts a seated woman engrossed in her sewing. The surrounding mud huts have also been included in the neat composition. On another canvas he has an aging woman, once more in the waiting mood, in a old and decrepit mud house.

An experimental work has women with surrounding scenes of rack and ruin replacing the peaceful scenes of the Nakshikanthar Maath. "In this I want to depict how our beautiful and peaceful homes are being replaced by rack and ruin which is taking place in the name of development," Jalal Uddin says.

Jalal Uddin has studied at the Department of Fine Arts DU, where his teachers included artists like Shahid Kabir, Kazi Ghiyasuddin, Mahmudul Haque and Mahbubul Amin. He says that in his days there may have been less experimentation than today, but they had a lot of academic work, especially outdoor sketching and painting.

He is full time set designer with Bangladesh Television and an advisor to a children's organisation where he teaches painting.