WINTER SNOW " PAINTINGS OF MASOOD HUSSAIN....

                                           

                                                                            

"WINTER SNOW  " PAINTINGS OF  MASOOD HUSSAIN....

Winter would not be winter without its pièce de résistance -- snow. And snow has been a great inspiration for the creative people  .Snow painting by itself has come to be regarded as a genre in art.

Generally  speaking , a   snow landscape  gives the feeling of uniformity , solitude and silence  to the  viewer  apart  from conveying  beauty as well as complex emotions and ideas.However, a  snow painting turns speaking and more  lively should the artist add scenes from life to it  .

I have seen some snow  paintings done by  great masters  in  some museums and art galleries of the US   . These paintings are  highly impressive and rare especially masterpieces like  Pieter Bruegel' s "The Hunters in the Snow" or  Camille Pissarro 's  "Road to Versailles at Louveciennes (The Snow Effect)" and  works of some  masters like  Vincent Van Gogh, Edward Munch , Claude Monet, Aldro T Hibbard etc.

 Apart from creating nostalgia  and   becoming reminiscent of something that the onlooker has lived through , quite often,  these snow  paintings  are speaking frames created  with  skilled use of colours and  guided by  profound observation and  sensitivity. Kashmir's Masood Hussain (born 1953)  is also a  painter of this style and genre. His snow  paintings  are speaking frames of culture and life  .He  brings Kashmir specific inputs in  his  frame making  it speak about culture and life . He makes you to see smoke emanating from the kitchen even under abundance of snow and freeze.You can see  people with a Pheran and Kangri  keeping pace with life's movement even under falling snow . Trapped under overwhelming  snow,  life makes limited demands; nothing  except warmth, shelter and food . His work makes you to feel so  .

In his work you can see  life's movement inspite of snow , chill and monotony. He makes you to see how snow collects on electric wires , how it makes the umbrellas heavy and how it creates impediments on roads and highways . But this in no way stops  life's   movement forward . Possibly  poeople  know that the spring's greenery is to follow  the snow  and  chill .People  know that  just one sunshine and this snow shall   wrap up its white blanket  .
.

Masood Hussain’s  snow paintings  appeal to a wide spectrum of viewers  especially those who are connected with Kashmir in any manner.The negative space in these painting is wonderfully filled up with total   winter haziness , so real and so close to kashmiris . This filling evokes mystery and  emotions of longing or loss.

Next time more on other segments of  Masood Hussain's Art .

(Avtar Mota)


CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.