The urban life: Walking the city — finding common aspects

LAHORE:

A solo painting exhibition, Walking the City, was held at Zulfi’s Art Gallery on Wednesday featuring the work of Durre Waseem. The artist displayed 41 oil and acrylic paintings featuring urban life, street views and landscapes from around the world.

Waseem was born in Lahore and did her master’s from the Punjab University. After teaching at the PU for seven years, she moved to Karachi and later to California, the United States, where she now teaches painting. “I have taken inspiration from urban scenes - cities that I have visited in Europe America and Pakistan,” Waseem said.

Mian Ijazul Hassan, the acclaimed painter and art critic, inaugurated the exhibition. Hassan said that Waseem had come a long way. “She stood out from her contemporaries even when she was teaching at PU. She has shown very sturdy brush work. Then there is great fluency in the way she paints, mixes colours and tones,” he said. “It is a very mature work. She is among the foremost painters of street view landscapes,” Hassan added.

Zulfiqar Zulfi, the gallery owner, said that he had asked Waseem to showcase her paintings completed in Italy, Spain and France. “This makes this exhibition international in a way,” Zulfi said.

Quddus Mirza, the NCA Fine Arts Department head, said: “Waseem’s new paintings bring forth the essence of our views and vision whether we are looking at the Eiffel Tower, or a church in the USA, canals in Venice or waterways in the Punjab.” Mirza said she had the remarkable ability to recreate the sensation of being in the presence of a living world and not its lifeless replica.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 4^th,  2016.