Point Of View
By Shafee Ramli aka Chief

Ahmad Nazri Abdullah paints in the style of the old masters of the English Romantics. His vast knowledge and highly skillful techniques have earned him commissions from various palaces and governments leaving him little time for what he loves most, painting the landscapes. The exhibition Point of View is a rare occasion that gives the public the opportunity to view and savour his technique on canvas that captures the fleeting atmospheric moment of his life in the impressionist style.

There are two common misnomers about Nazri. The first is that, as an Impressionist, Nazri’s paintings were done spontaneously. In fact, Nazri studies his subjects intently, plans for his paintings, and works passionately and extremely hard to achieve his results. He often paints a series of the same subject to capture the changing effects of the light, swapping canvases as the day progressed.

Secondly, most of Nazri’s landscape paintings were done on location or en plein air. He works non-stop all day long to capture the effect of the fleeting light and is grossly immersed in his paintings and most times he forgets to eat or sleep. Nazri paints many subjects again and again, but every one in his series of paintings is different, whether it's a painting of Melawati Hills or one of his favourite cats.

A close-up study of one of Nazri’s paintings will show that colours were often used straight from the tube or mixed on the canvas. He also mixed colours -- using thin, broken layers of paint that allows the lower layers of color to shine through.

Build up of textures which vary from thick to thin, with tiny dabs of light, adding contours for definition and colour harmonies and working from dark to light.

Nazri uses dots and patches of colour to indicate forms, such as trees and foliage, rather than drawing with line, then filling the shapes with colour. Nazri paints simultaneously - the colour, light, value and form of the subject.

He approaches the problem of indicating the whole tree, versus indicating all the individual leaves, by inventing a visual equivalent of multiple forms with patches of light and colour, without actually painting each leaf literally. Like all great impressionists, each stroke serves multiple functions of value, colour, spatial position, form and light resulting in a superb painterly technique.

Working directly from nature, Nazri finds that even the gloomiest days contain an infinite variety of colours. To capture fleeting effects of light and colour, however, Nazri has to paint quickly, employing short brushstrokes loaded with individualized colours. This technique results in canvases charged with painterly activity. Nazri’s representation of light is based on his knowledge of the laws of optics as well as his own observations of his subjects. 

His paintings capture the fleeting effects of sunlight at different times of the day and in various environments and moods, enchanting the viewer every time one looks at it. If anything, in our era of visual overload, the freshness of Nazri’s Point of View  definitely touches the heart and soul.