Shahla Rafi’s born in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan, on Monday 12th December 1949, Shahla Rafi’s official date of birth is exactly a year later — an error over which she had no control. This perhaps is the only falsehood in the persona of this unique Pakistani landscape artist.
The only daughter, among two sons, Shahla moved with her parents from location to location wherever her father happened to be stationed, but the longest cumulative duration of stay was on the Potohar Plateau, where the towns of Jhelum, Rawalpindi and Islamabad, all are located. This random fact was to cast the permanent mold for her art. For this landscape artist, her “muse” — if so it can be termed — as she discovered in her teens, is the Potohar plateau itself.
The circumstances of life took her to Paris, France, first as a student for almost a year at the end of her teens, and then again, a decade later, when the exigencies of married life took her away from her beloved Potohar for another 23 years. But, extraordinarily, her artistic inspiration would dry up when removed from her “soil”. In order to paint, she had to be in Potohar — and it is to Potohar that the artist would return, ever and always, even during her “exile”.
“Romantic Realism”, perhaps, is the term that best describes Shahla Rafi’s art. Severed from her roots by the circumstances of life, Shahla found that the only way to retain her essential life force was to regularly revive her links with her land. Hers is a soul that needs the vitality of constant rejuvenation, without which she feels her artistic sensibilities dry up and wither away. Like Wordsworth, she periodically required revival of her pantheistic essence to sustain her during her long absences from the environment of her genesis. It is neither the culture nor the people, but Nature, as manifest in the land of her birth, that comes through her veins and finds expression in her paints.
She sees and expresses her landscapes, not only through her eyes and her mind, but, most importantly, through the longings of her soul. She does not idealize her subject, but she bestows upon it her infinite love; and her love is palpable in her painting. Neither a tint nor a hue, nor the minutest difference of texture, escapes her intuitive eye or her gentle touch. Her love, however, does not blind her to the flaws in her subject — such as human degradation of Nature. These she acknowledges, but without dwelling on them; for if she did, her love for her subject would not hold credibility; nor does she gloss over them, for if she did, she would delude both her viewer and herself — and Shahla Rafi can never be content with delusions. Her art is nothing if it is not honest. She gives you the truth, as it is, pure and unadulterated. But she shows it to you with the unique perspective of her soul, with all the love and yearning that the landscape evokes in her.
Because of her uncompromising honesty, her art cannot stray from realism; and because of her infinite love, it is always romantic. The uncompromising honesty of her aesthetic makes no concession to her feelings, and yet her unqualified commitment neither flinches from nor is shamed by reality.
Does the magic of her art lie in her singular synthesis of a child’s pristine vision with the consummate virtuoso’s natural flair for form, color and perspective, and the accomplished mastery of the maturest perfectionist — taking two to three months, on average, for each painting — never content with achievement? But if the key to Shahla Rafi’s technique defies identification, there is certainly no doubt as to its effect. She evokes in the viewer the same uncanny sense of longing and belonging that is the very life force of her art. Even if you have not experienced the countryside she depicts, she manages to evoke a perception of the spatio-temporal continuum to which her landscapes belong. She has the capacity to touch the viewer at a level that is somehow deeper than the merely visual. The reality of her vision becomes a part of the viewer’s own personal experience, and in a way that no photograph can, for she gives you the emotive texture of her sensations.
The aesthetic splendor of the English Realists is magnificent. But in the exquisite beauty they project, the idealization is overwhelming, and to that extent is beyond “real” experience. In their realism, they give the viewer a distillation of the idyllic they conceive and can assemble. But it is a quantum of aesthetic distillation that is outside of ordinary human experience. Although one can long for such perfection, one cannot belong to it, and it, most certainly, cannot belong to normal human experience. Shahla Rafi, however, does not idealize her subject. Instead, she provides the texture of reality. She brings to romantic realism the dimension of universal empiricism, and gives to the viewer a vision to have and to hold for ever.
Shahla Rafi’s romantic realism is all her own. It is unique, and expresses the underlying unity of her soul with the land of her origin. She gives the viewer her country, as it is. But she imbues the landscape with limitless love, the longing of her soul, and her loyalty to the soil, real, true, unconquered and unconquerable. It is impossible not to love Shahla’s country when you view it through her art.
BQ
On a l’impression que les feuilles bougent et que l’eau coule et la lumière dans la brume et la vapeur est surprenante. C’est différent à la fois de l’hyperréalisme et de l’impressionnisme auxquels on pense un peu. Cette peinture est une méditation.
CK