ahore-based artist Shahnaz Akhtar has been rendering her subjects with remarkable skill, whether these are people, or places or pieces of pottery. She possesses this turn of hand that transforms an outside reality into a personal narration; yet inviting everyone to see, recognise and enjoy her imagery.

Imagery, themes and subject matter are all important, but for many these are merely means to say something else. In Akhtar’s solo exhibition, Vision of the Heart, which was held recently at Hamail Art Gallery, Lahore, a spectator realised that the painter had picked her models, still-life arrangements and interiors to express something different, something beyond, big, and supreme.

Akhtar draws people of different ages and backgrounds. There are portraits of Western individuals and locals who are her acquaintances, some of them are domestic help. She also displayed two self-portraits. Besides, the exhibition had carefully organised still-lifes, trees and flowers viewed from the house or outside (like the painting, titled Saddar, Lahore), and compositions based on the poetry of Mirza Ghalib. In the latter section, actually her latest creation, one finds a remote link to the bard’s verses, so even if a viewer is unable to read or understand the couplet, they can still connect with the painter’s vision and enjoy it as an independent visual/ idea.

Her canvases are a blend of reality and imagination. They are so convincing that one is unable to find the boundary between the two hemispheres.

A similar approach is evident in the way Akhtar converts her observations on her canvases. To an ordinary viewer, individuals like Zeenat, Nighat Nassar and the unnamed characters are not familiar, but what makes them attached to these paintings is the way Akhtar deals with the factual details in her pursuit of the essence of reality. Her art is a contract between what is witnessed as neutral, objective and physical, and what is experienced as its recollection in the archives of our memory.

She demonstrates the ability to transform the outside world into a realm of lines, strokes, daubs, forms and colours in works that are based entirely on reality. Perhaps, the most important quality of her work is not what she chooses to paint but how she paints it.

Art is a form of bringing our memories to the surface. These memories may be long-distance and short-lived, of something we encountered years ago, maybe as a child, or what we saw a moment ago. This process (of art-making) involves an act of internalisation. Because no matter if a spectator is looking at the amaryllis flowers, a bougainvillea or a eucalyptus tree, or oranges, pears, or a polio victim, they are actually seeing all this through the eyes — and hands — of Shahnaz Akhtar, who is able to add a segment of her creative self into what she represents.

That very self — a person’s personality, and the observer’s power — are visible in Akhtar’s paintings, in which the physical reality is depicted but not as a disinterested partner/ painter.

On the other hand, Akhtar infuses her particular vision into arrangements on the table, segments of houses, sections of nature, groups of people et al. That personal imprint that we recognise while looking at her paintings is the hallmark of her work.

Akhtar acquired her MFA from the University of the Punjab, before she went to Columbia University, NYC, for courses in painting. Her educational training and professional practice aside, it is her natural gift as a painter that pervades her work. She demonstrates the ability to transform the outside world into a realm of lines, strokes, daubs, forms and colours in works that are based entirely on reality. Perhaps, the most important quality of her work is not what she chooses to paint but how she paints it.

One may also find cultural and societal traces in her work. Akhtar captures an audience with the brightness of her colour palette, strong compositions, the variations of light, and a maturity in handling the medium.

Akhtar merges, or navigates the outside and the inside, the public and the private, art history and a painter’s individuality. Her application of paint — which occasionally reminds us of the master of modern art, Paul Cezanne — is what distinguishes her work. The movement of hand (which includes eye and mind also) makes her canvases delightful to look at and connect with.

The sheer pleasure and power in rendering her themes are evident in her landscapes and figurative compositions. An amazing dimension of her work from different periods of her life (the exhibition at Hamail was a retrospective) is that Shahnaz Akhtar is among the Pakistani artists who draw with paint rather than fill a space mechanically and laboriously. This brilliance, energy, and sensitivity is apparent in a variety of artworks, be it about the trees at night, or a woman washing clothes, or a young girl standing in the doorway. Someone who looks at these paintings is able to recognise vegetation, human bodies, fruits, pottery, interiors, but they will also read it as a personal message from the artist, through her individual way of transcribing — and transforming — reality.

The writer is an art academic and senior columnist