Your greatness is measured

by your horizons.

                                      - Michelangelo

 

If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint – said Edward Hopper, the early twentieth century realist American painter.  A painter of few words, Azmeer Hossain is as humble a man as you will meet but with so much to offer us in The Beckoning Horizon. It is a body of work as seminal as it is sensual and exhilarating.

 

Essentially abstract, the series of Horizon and Mindscape paintings are quite unique. With tantalizing splashes of realism, this mix ingeniously and almost instantly gets us into that zone of discomfort. We begin to see fragments of reality juxtaposed with, and even folded into, visions of the past and the future – and yes, alluring and beckoning portals too.

 

The Memory series is more abstract despite the painter resorting to suggestively familiar shapes. They conjure up a surreal, Daliesque universe without the obvious motifs – quite a feat considering his persistence with geometric elements. The pieces persistently pull us inwards, as if into a journey through time, in some cases even back to cosmic origins. The journeys that await us are that of our collective memory, of ancestral longings, to and from the promised land.

 

The Monsoon series are watercolors that we think we are all familiar with, until we get close – only to find ourselves physically present in the near hyper-real landscape, with details that we simply have not seen in any watercolor techniques anywhere in the past.

 

With an unwavering devotion to this exactingly detailed style, Azmeer takes months and sometimes even years, from starting out on a piece, repeatedly returning only to inch towards the finish. So gentle and humble in nature that it belies his steely steadfastness within – another master in the making.