Mother and Child (acrylic) (left); Sailing Boats (acrylic)

I distinctly remember my first introduction to painter Nurul Islam at one of the prominent galleries in Dhaka. At first glance, he seemed to have had experienced extended struggles. A few months after that I went to his studio and found him working on an oil painting. Using vibrant colours and strokes, Nurul Islam took a trip to a strange world. Passionate and imaginative, Nurul Islam shies away from overexposure, commercial lures and dictates of popular taste.
Islam's solo painting exhibition titled “Call of Eternity” is now on at National Art Gallery, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy.
Islam, a graduate of the Dacca Art College (presently Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Dhaka), is now 77 -- a time when artists like to focus on their earlier works. At present he is occupied with experimenting with new forms and techniques. Though the pat style (popularised by Quamrul Hassan) has influenced Nurul Islam, the artist developed his own traits that demonstrate his dedication to art.
His accomplishments include volumes of drawings, sketches, and paintings. He is a multitalented artist working practically in all medias -- oil, watercolour, gouache, etching, pastel, woodcut, linocut, pen and pencil.
Nurul Islam set out as a figurative painter. In the early stages of his career, nature and human figures occupied the focus in his works. Along with natural elements, lines and varied familiar and unfamiliar forms are predominant features of his works. The treatment of colour and figures in movement are exceptional. His canvases are marked with fluidity. Some of his works seem to convey solitude. During a particular phase of his career, Islam focused on Bengali female forms in various moods.
Celebration of colours and lines has created emotional potency, tempering the impetuosity of movement and placing the focus on the essentials in his compositions. His works are distinct for sheer aesthetic balance.
The colours he uses -- green, red, yellow and azure -- flow and merge with such veritable passion that his paintings virtually seem to speak. The adroit amalgamation of colours produces an environment that is refreshing in effect as it is balanced in objective abstraction, being often minimal in visibility. No wonder the figures seem more mystifying and enigmatic, yet engrossing with remarkable intensity.
Nurul Islam has incorporated the inner essence of folk elements in most of his works. Different aspects of rural life are his main concern. His semi-abstraction of rural areas, and the transparent technique, boosts his use of the background. His excessive use of space provides grace to all his work that belongs to this sensuous grade. Tactile, sharp and stirring colours give that depth and shape to his paintings, where even recurrent motifs like birds, fish, pitcher, bull and lush foliage unfold from another perspective in varying combinations of light and shade.
The exhibition ends on March 6.