When daily life helps a brush

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: Just a few years ago, Mohammad Firoz Khan, a Delhi-based artist attracted art lovers and even buyers, alongside animal lovers - but for all wrong reasons; cow.

He painted cows in multiple paintigns in an immensely intricate manner, detailing its body language as well as stylising it like an icon.

Having Mohammad as his first name, he saw some controversies coming his way from the cow protectors. However, they soon realised Mohammad had no intentions to berate the simple animal or claiming his artistic legacy over it because they saw he paints largely all animals in their best natural environment.

The controversy creators fell silent. That was sometime back. Recalls the artist, smiling, “My love for animals especially the cow, pacified them. They not only saw my other works but also appreciated and went back.”

The uninitiated ones came just for a fodder for a new controversy. Interestingly they also didn’t know that Mohammad was under the tutelage of renowned late artist Manjit Bawa whose paintings had cows as their integral part, to the extent of humanising them, beautifully.

Mohammad’s other creations include zebras, tigers, hens, goats, elephants, sometimes co-existing, sometimes at peace in their own environs.

Notably, Mohammad has not undergone any formal training in art but gained experience first from his father Late Mohammad Ibrahim Khan, a banner painter followed by Manjit Bawa who he considers his “guru jee”.

“I was with him for 14 years” he says adding his guru taught him to see art “through a maze of depictable visuals scattered over the country. He asked me to draw inspiration from real life and savour the nuances of texture.”

Subsequently Mohammad also made name because of his style that had significant influence of his guru, albeit with his own interpretation of the life of the feathered creatures and beasts.

Avoiding explicit linear delineation

What makes Mohammad’s creations interesting is his ability to avoid explicit linear delineation, while projecting solid masses, as much as depicting daily life.

For instance, he looks at the little details of a tailor working on a manual sewing machine or a street side vendor selling a cool drink on a hot summer day or rickshaw pullers or beggars and various other street vendors; denizens of the city’s poorest quarters.

“It is the sheer simplicity of each of these activities that appeals me and is reflected through my Canvas,” he submits.

Being truly Indian in his approach, Mohammad has attracted quite many foreigner art galleries, individual buyers and auctioneers; for instance, Saatchi, London Art and Toxtethart Gallery, Singapore and Dubai.