The New Nation - Internet Edition

Sheikh Arif Bulbon

Najma Akhter is a familiar name in the arena of oriental art. She started her new journey to abstract when she found herself a new and innovative path for exploration. She took the option to painting when she was moved by deep and slight states of feelings. These were on displayed at her third solo exhibition titled 'Memories and Desire' at the La Gallerie of the Alliance Francaise at Dhanmondi in the city. The two-week long exhibition ended on October 29.

Najma is a passionate painter whose primary aim is to express her inner world through art. Her soul is always in search of a space where emerald green, azure, crimson and yellow come together to represent great affliction and ecstasy. Her space is filled up sometimes with bright and at other times ironically submissive colours.

Space is almost as important as colour to Najma. She prefers free spaces and not mixed-up ones, revealing a sensibility that desires at times for the wide open world of the rustic even when acknowledging the necessity of dealing with the detaining, constricting limiting of the urban life. Her abstraction is colour and form oriented. Some motifs of her paintings have been taken from nature and the deep ocean is a recurring theme in her works in which she finds ever-changing mysterious divisions.

In the show, her works depicted the scenic beauty of the Penang Hill. The mysterious mountains were featured in her paintings in a lively and animated mode. She played with texture and illusion for surface effects. Space has been created on the canvas although some of the colours have been applied flat.

Therefore, manifestation of the aesthetic elements was her one the prominent characters in her works. Her work had a peaceful effect and she tried to avoid the irrelevant objects.

Anyone can be pleased while looking the charismatic beauty of use of colour by Najma. Not surprisingly, for someone who had been attracted to versions of pastoral, her favourite colour seems to be green and emerald like her works titled 'Nature Clock' and 'Mind Machine.' But phobia of urban life has also made her juxtapose blue, violet, grey and black to create an urban reality in very impressive mood.

Now Najma likes to work in acrylic, which she feels is a medium where an artist gets a taste of coolness. She is comfortable working on any size of canvas according to the painting's theme and composition.