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In The Minds Eye

AUTHOR: MARJORIE HUSAIN
PUBLICATIONS: ARTIST’S PERSPECTIVE
DATED: NOT KNOWN

Tasaduq Sohail is a piquant character a convincing story teller and consummate artist who has lived a free and independent life untrammelled by kith or kin. His close companion who for many years, lived in his London attic studio was a tomcat named Khan, who often appeared in his paintings.

Sohail was initially an Urdu short story Writer who made his home in London where he lived for four decades working al numerous odd jobs to earn a meagre living, he attended evening classes at St. Martins School of Art, where his efforts were strongly encouraged by his teachers. Working at numerous odd jobs, he focused on painting and exhibited his work at weekends with other artists at Hyde Park.

According to Sohail, a palmist once read his hand and told him he would acquire fame at the age of 60; the rest is history. He was discovered by gallery directors in London, and his drawings were acquired by the British Museum. He travelled was exhibited in the US and Scandinavia and in Pakistan his suffused with suffering mood changing idyllic, three-dimensional fantasies of beautiful lands where birds and animals reign supreme; and portraits that act as surfaces for his distinctive material qualities. Words are banished there are no titles to offer hints of the artists intentions, and the work speaks volumes, evoking greater force in its ambivalence.

In these, Sohail s most recent work one finds a primitive exoticism evoking spontaneous cross-cultural referral; here the artist plumbs the mystery of mankinds links to nature. One finds people and animals portrayed with equal importance.

In a painting hovering on abstraction the viewer discovers a world where nudity -a symbol of innocence -is acceptable in a landscape where giant fish, winged creatures and man-sized creatures exist peacefully without fear. Sohails paintings are a reminder of a fact of life we had possibly forgotten until recent times: that nature is supreme and we not take its most ordinary aspects for granted.