For millennia, trees have been such a constant touch of nature that we take their benefits for granted, and pass them by perfunctorily.
Still, a few of us try to look into the trees around us as individual organisms or collectively as a precious species – a personified form.
In the Washington metro area, long time residents, local creative artists, and newcomers find inspiration and meaning in the many shades of brown and green that bedeck the landscapes of the District, Virginia and Maryland.
Cherry blossoms may steal the spotlight each spring, but all year round, Washington’s diverse neighborhoods, forests, and parks offer a rich variety of flora, and inspiration for artists to spark a thought or another brush with curiosity.
Farida Haque, both an immigrant and a longtime resident of the area, brings a unique perspective both as a poet and an artist.
Her creative experiences in her native Pakistan and other parts of the world impart in her an urge to look into Nature with all the senses – from the scent of a fresh flower to spiritual readings on tree leaves, branches and trunks to sweet sounds of birds and gentle winds.
Farida Haque, introducing her work
Recently, the artist had the opportunity to showcase her latest works – drawn, sketched, imagined within last year or so during her stay in Washington area.
Everything looks like part of a fascinating but vast and ambitious quest as suggested by the exhibition named “The Secret Life of Trees.”
The inquiry stems from her lifelong love of colors, forms and Nature, something Haque says, she inherited from her parents growing up in creative environs of Lahore, the bustling heart of culture.
“The sanctity of Nature really resonates with me. We take everything for granted. Trees and forests and woods. We love it of course,” she said at the Pakistani embassy, where visitors gathered for an exposition of her works.
But when human beings try to wander into Nature, often their experience with a sweet smell or sound of natural rhythms is so fleeting, she says.
“I try to capture this minuscule moment,” she told a gathering of diplomats, scholars, and writers.
A special feature of her works is calligraphy, beautifully etching in paint names and attributes of God, the ultimate Artist and the Creator.
Having already published a collection of her poems, Haque draws, inscribes, engraves on trees, looking into their soul, and with it perhaps into collective soul of the world.
Artist Jamaliah Morais
A look at her works displayed at the Pakistan embassy in Washington D.C. – with many wondrous shades of brown dominating like a theme from a world of shadow, of sun and wood, soil or sodden ground, or leaves turning their colors with changing moods – red, gold, green, dark brown.
The unmistakable message echoes in the vein of William Wordsworth’s famous lines:
The world is too much with us, late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers,
Little we see in Nature that is ours.
Words and images striking more tersely in the face of deteriorating climate. Heed or ignore calls for action on climate change – choice is yours but there are winds of change out there -nothing could be taken for granted, especially in harsh withering times.
Much more than a reflection on the beauty of Nature, perhaps is Haque’s grappling with the perennial question of relationship between humans, Nature and the Creator.
The question has long remained delicately hidden from the roving eye but inescapably, yet partly. writ large to the focused, spititually nourished and imagination-sharpened eye of the artist.
Off the colorful fields of Nature, Haque is busy musing in her world of thoughts, wondering on the layers of human existence in relevance to Nature, the economy of her words and brushstrokes mirroring the skills of her economist husband Nadeem Ul Haque.
“It is the level of creativity and attempt to understand the world around us that measures the standard of a people and civilization,” Pakistani author Mowahid Hussain Shah said at the event hosted by Ambassor Jalil Abbas Jilani.
Mowahid Hussain Shah and Dr Akbar Ahmad “It is the level of creativity and attempt to understand the world around us that measures the standard of a people and civilization,” Pakistani author Mowahid Hussain Shah said
Poems like ‘Pre-dawn and a Verandah of a Hundred Years,’ ‘Indus Valley Woman’ and ‘The Search for Lost Songs’ have deep meanings, glimpsing into civilizations, living, experiencing, and exploring metaphors of love, strife, history and exploration of time and space.
Take for example the poem ‘Turn My Face’ :
I am tired of being an empath
Feeling the dry pain of a withered leaf
Swallowing the scream of an abandoned car
Just for a moment hold me
Turn my face to
Where lovers absolve creation of all sin
And the open wound of a bed
Of glowing poppies, like blood-drenched rubies
In an affirmation of eternity.
There is a lot to unearth for Haque and readers of her poems in the years ahead, as she uses a fascinating mix of words and pictures to share her experiences, findings and inquiries into the world, personal experiences, and evolution of the society against multiple settings and amidst mystique, colors and many shades of trees.
Farida Haque has previously shown her work in Lahore, Sri Lanka, Mexico City and Cairo. Her painting “Dancing Feet,” now part of a private collection, won an award at the Malta Biennale.
