K. Zewari, of English-Afghan origin, is a poet and painter who expresses his life’s journey, search for identity and deep attachment to nature, in his effervescent abstract paintings.
Zewari is largely self-taught (he was tutored in drawing technique and watercolour painting by a leading British watercolourist), and paints with a freedom and freshness of expression and colour that combine in his unique style.
His abstract landscapes vary from angular to curvaceous, while his artistic response to the natural world enjoins shapes and colours from his immediate environment, incorporating tones and textures from his past.
Zewari’s sense of rhythm and metre echoes in his energetic and harmonious painting style. His works are an adjunct to his personal odyssey in search of his mixed race roots. Zewari paints in combinations of acrylic, watercolour, spray-paint and enamel and uses a range of other materials and media to achieve depth, relief and colour impact.
A significant volume of his painting is in triptych format, emblematic of the artist’s ethnicity and heritage. Zewari’s digital and dimensional works reflect his painting style and are the vessels in which he successfully blends his poetry and visual language in a highly engaging and innovative form that advances his dialogue with his audience. Zewari is an exponent of
la technique d’harmonisation des couleurs sur toile.Personal Statement by the Artist from his time in the Middle East"
I was born in London to an English mother and an Afghan father, who were not married, and adopted by an English couple because my mother was unable to give me the life she wanted for her son. I was sent to English boarding schools from the age of eight to eighteen. I wanted to be a journalist, but then qualified as a lawyer, working in London, Hong Kong, Singapore and latterly in the UAE.
Painting is part of my creative instinct that began when I was a child, hibernated for some decades, then happily re-emerged as a natural progression from my (amateur) photography, writing and poetry. Art connects my past and present and allows me to describe and harmonise experiences and to express emotions. Then there is the simple pleasure of placing form and colour on paper, canvas or board.
My paintings arrive when they were due because of a growing need to find an additional creative outlet. They have been, and remain, largely fed by the disparate, yet collective, influences of my photography, my origins and life experiences, senses and motivations.
My early works were structured and representational; more recent works are looser and filled with expressions of the natural world, along with reflections on latter day events. I choose not to focus solely on the beauty and subtlety of nature, but also to touch on the mundane, as well as on man's inhumanity to man.
Movement plays a central role in several pieces and many also have strong links to the feminine. Colour, light and line guide the eye to my abstract paintings' creative purpose, which I try to infuse with harmonious shape and colour combinations. Frequently, the colours I use are drawn from my immediate environment and, as often as not, they self-select themselves. The brilliance of bright Oriental light is reflected in many pieces. My darker works are a balance and a reminder that sunshine gives way, eventually, to dusk and then to darkness itself. So in life, as in nature.
I paint outdoors in my studio-cum-garden in Dubai, usually in the very high temperatures and humidity. This intensifies rather than saps my creative experience, although some believe it to be a mild form of madness to work in such conditions. I work almost exclusively at weekends.
This gives added impetus and urgency to my work and I am usually engaged on two or more pieces at a time, which is easy as drying times are fast.
The triptych format of many recent works is reflective of my own three identities and phases of life. By using a range of media; acrylics, watercolour, gouache, as well as spray paints and enamels, often in combination, these paintings have a diversity and freshness about them.
A series of optionally illuminated abstract triptychs in acrylic has added an exciting new dimension to my art. I shall be exploring this and other formats in the years ahead and moving my art offering in simultaneous opposite directions and dimensions."
Dubai, January 2014"Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen." Leonardo da Vinci