Two friends on an artistic journey
Jimmy Engineer and two of his exhibits at the gallery (right). Pix by Priyanka Samaraweera
A single childhood miracle made all the difference in Jimmy’s life. At six he was diagnosed with a kidney failure, a condition that spelt death in three months. But, even as children all around were being claimed, Jimmy was given a reprieve. “Nature gave me two brand new kidneys”.
He was not too young to be unmoved by this marvel. Since then giving back by improving the lives of others became one leg that holds up his life, the other being art- for he had been an artist as soon as his four-year- old pudgy fingers could wield powder colour.
Later as a well known artist, he would donate as much as 75 to 80 percent of proceeds from sales of work to charity.
Here for the opening of Billari, the new Park Road, Colombo 5, art gallery of his friend Mueen Saheed, who is today well-known as a Sri Lankan abstract painter, Jimmy Engineer has much to look back on.
This gentle Parsi who was awarded the National Endowment of the Arts Award, USA, has delivered a speech on his life at Harvard, and exhibited in highly prestigious museums around the world.
A series of some of his best known paintings depicts the partition of India, capturing the throes in which his motherland was born. These paintings show highly detailed, teeming humanity migrating- a thousand little personal stories on each vast canvas- columns of people stretching all the way to the very dim horizon where fires flash out like comets: monumental, dramatic records.
Among the most unusual are his painting inspired by the Javed Nama (‘Book of Eternity’), the Persian version of the Divine Comedy, where the author Allama Iqbal is Dante and ‘Moulana Rumi’ is Virgil. They visit “various heavens and spheres” and approach divinities and negative historical figures, among them traitors who betrayed the nation to the British. At the end of the book the poet promises guidance to the younger generation of the land. Jimmy’s paintings depict the traversing of a vast cosmos just like Dante’s.
While Jimmy also dedicated a lot of work to depict the poverty-stricken, his most remarkable works draw on classic architectures of the world.
Called the “Peace and Harmony” series, these juxtapose classic buildings from different cultures- India, Pakistan, Egypt, Uzbekistan, Turkey, China- together weaving an astonishingly majestic tapestry that climbs up and up to form a dense collage, posing the question why different peoples cannot coexist if buildings can.
Self-styling himself ‘the servant of Pakistan’, he is a perfect ambassador, capturing the natural beauty and a beautiful people underneath stereotypes and conflicts.
As a social worker, Jimmy fostered the ‘walk culture’ where he took to the streets speaking out for those with cancer and leprosy, for the right to education, for the mentally ill, for the blind and the differently abled. In Sri Lanka too he has been working for the underprivileged. As a philanthropist he has been practically helping all sectors of ‘the suffering’.
Mueen Saheed, the owner of the Billari Gallery, is artistically the opposite of Jimmy. He prefers abstract to real life- as the latter, for him, lacks challenge. Starting as a jewellery designer who won the Golden Apple Award for Innovation, the self-taught artist gave up a lucrative business- the Regent Fine Jewels- which he himself had carved out with 20 outlets in a number of countries.
Mueen Saheed at the opening of the gallery and his work on display (left)
Saheed now paints all night in his upstairs studio with music washing over, shutting the outer eye and keeping the ‘inner’ open. For him the lure of the abstract lies in the subtle messages it gives. “It is very therapeutical. At first glance, you see nothing in an abstract. But then you start wondering and connecting- which launches a spiritual journey.”
Saheed relishes painting what cannot be otherwise expressed- from human feelings to subtle social issues to music.
“I try to create/ paint a story, so that you sit- and like reading a book read the painting. That is why I would call myself a narrative abstract artist.”
The Billari Art Gallery opened with 300 paintings by Saheed, and around 70 by Jimmy. A percentage from the sale of each work of art will contribute to a number of charities, supporting the visually handicapped, sick and the needy- including those who find it financially difficult to pursue studies after their ‘O’ levels.
The Billari Art Gallery, is situated at 165/11 Park Road, Colombo 5 and is open every day from 10.30 a.m.
to 6 p.m.