What is art without a milieu and a milieu without art? How does one relate to the other? How is art a multifaceted indulgence and how does one move from one dimension to the other? This is the wonder of the milieu that create an artist, a painter.
I have tried to bring artistry to the cinematic frame and cinema to the canvas crossing rivers with paper and pencil.
Farasnama: The Legend of the Horse took me to untraveled ground. The horse in an unexplored territory where humans dare not tread. My horses fly, freeze, and bow in homage in mystical ways. They dance in their silence. Their colours manifest shades of greys, charcoal, blacks and unbleached, white, raw umber and grungy browns…and often an unexpected red with spots and markings that make one creature so radically different from one another.
They are symphonic with the eyes skimming over a piano keyboard as one discovers qualities of these magnificent animals. Painting is the playground in which any game can be played without winning or losing.
Muzaffar Ali, oil on canvas, 2024, From the series ‘Farasnama, Legend of the Horse’
I began painting as a child and it held my hand as an artist who was to walk into the dark rooms of filmmaking. I went into art as organically as I could have. Farasnama is a continuation of this happening which is seeking new boundaries, redefining time and reinventing age, and reversing it with the raw energy of the free horse. My horses are free, not controlled by legs, not kicked in the belly. They are meant to be stroked and gently caressed. These horses dance as they strike a muscular pose for the beholder. Dynamic, dramatic and cinematic, my horses are sacred, thus riderless.
My horses are the dance in my art. My film is my dance. I teach dance which is invisible.
Like horses of the Prophet, they are the message of peace, not war.
What does creativity mean and what is creative energy? It means blessings that come pouring in from all around and fill you with good cheer that is returned to the source in the form on an ongoing river of beauty. This is a powerful cycle which once embarked upon remains rejuvenated like snow falling on mountains turning into timeless streams. Farasnama is a harvest of this creative energy. It is a creative spirit where medium is immaterial. Every medium is in your quest. Art is the essence of nature and your receptivity to it. Making people beautiful is the art of being beautiful. A happy world is a great world and art is its key.
Muzaffar Ali, oil on canvas, 2024, From the series ‘Farasnama, Legend of the Horse’
Every day, every week, month, year, decade, century is remembered by this enormous sense of accomplishment of the wonderful, of colour texture form in every possible medium discovered by man. A horse travels from place to place carrying its rider and discovering the world. A horse is unique and universal and he gives more than you can receive and expects the least from you for his blessings.
My journey through art has been in discovering poetry in science, and science in poetry. This happened with the artist in me sitting across the table in the Aligarh Library Canteen having tea with a poet and a scientist. They may not have met in each other but they met in me. I became the canteen and the library in the same breath.
My early works were oils inspired by geological forms and sections. The hidden and the revealed. The mysterious and the mystical, these metaphysical formulations were the early dawning of my art. My milieus changed and so did the aura of their nostalgia. From Lucknow to Kotwara to Nainital to Aligarh to Calcutta to Delhi to Bombay stood my nostalgic milestones, all related to the form and formlessness of art. I have seen art and known artists and measured my own art in their context.
Zooni Portrait by Muzaffar Ali, oil on canvas, 2023. From the series ‘Farasnama, Legend of the Horse’.
My art became my most important way into colour and texture. Cities, streets, homes, trees, arches, oceans, lakes, rivers, skyscrapers,
bridges and light pouring in, automobiles and timeless horses. Everything became my way to art.
Farasnama is my latest series of art. My love for those who have no voice. Pure form, and energy that makes you feel timeless, ageless, and speechless.
Muzaffar Ali is an artist, filmmaker, fashion designer and poet.
The Farasnama exhibition is on at Bikaner House, New Delhi, till October 28, 2024.
