Nazrul Islam

It is not easy for an established artist to break away from her customary and popular style to create a new one. But Farida Zaman, now nearing 60, seems to be making such a move. Farida had developed her stylistic identity in her early 30s. She had distinguished herself as a sensitive and romantic artist through her large oil paintings in the Fifth Delhi Art Triennial in 1983, which brought her an Honorable Mention award. She usually has a subject theme- fishing nets, boats and the river, and she has an elegant style in depicting her subject, easy flowing brush with thinly applied paint, transparent and often dominated by browns and blues. From the beginning she has also been using small dots to decorate large spaces in contrasting or complementary colours to her compositions.

At one stage, Farida introduced human figures, mostly females- fisher-women, as well as fish, birds and animals- particularly the cat, into her canvas. They were like indispensable members of the riverine fishing community. The subject matter and the style of painting created a beautiful ambience, which the observer cannot avoid being overcome by. Farida depicts not only the river as part of the fishing community, but also the small pools of water, like the typical rural pond.

Increasingly Farida has become concerned with water, and now indeed with its scarcity rather than its abundance. Her recent shift in style is also largely dictated by this feeling in her that water is no longer ubiquitous, but rather increasing in paucity. She looks at the landscape from above and finds small and narrow strips of water, often the abandoned channels of rivers or the small oxbow lakes or ‘Baors’. The fish has disappeared, but the fishing birds still hang around searching for fish but with little luck.

Then there is the nearly dry land, the red soil, with very little signs of water, or sometimes without any water; parched land, drought affected with a lone sheep or goat, thirsty, and desperate to find some water. These are Farida’s most recent subjects and she also turns to abstraction in her expression. Browns dominate in some compositions but her love for black and blues remains true.

At an earlier phase, Farida developed a narrative around Sufia, a character symbolizing a common village woman, or sometimes an urban single mother.

The depictions of Sufia has been in an exaggerated form, a thin body, with a very thin long neck and boney limbs and carefree body.  Sufia comes back at different times in various identities.

Farida sometime brings Sufia to the urban setting too, like a couple taking a ride on a rickshaw symbolizing the commoners urban life.

Farida presents Sufia in acrylic in large canvases as well as in sketches. There are different colour schemes, some in brown and yellow, some in black and blue, but almost none in green. Farida seems to be avoiding greens as a prominent colour.

Farida’s recent fascination for flowers have found them expressed on her canvas; beautiful renderings of wild flowers as well as  some garden flowers. The blue-white water-hyacinth or the crimson Joba or the golden yellow Kadam, make enchanting compositions.

Cats and crows also seem to be part of Farida’s psyche. The cat particularly gets a special identity in her brush, with its surrealistically elongated neck and thin body.

But we need to go back to the artist’s latest works before we end this the commentary. These are generally abstract in composition, inspired, however, by water bodies, whether these be in wet regions or in nearly drought stricken lands. Some compositions are inspired by Farida’s thought about unknown planets or by the underground soil profile. She imagines the reality or myth of water in such places.

She has a wonderful sense of balance in her compositions in terms of spatial forms, lines and detail designs within forms. In some works she emphasize on texture, but not necessarily based on thick impasto. All along she has remained an artist of nature and life, well integrated.

Farida creates very large, medium as well as small canvases. Interestingly she leaves more voids in small compositions than in large ones which are carefully worked upon. Canvas painting still remains her medium of expression. Farida Zaman is a very committed artist and has taken painting as a serious pursuit.  She is definitely one of the significant modern artists of Bangladesh.