By Umer Nangiana
One day, he saw a painting and it swept him off his feet. So fascinated was he by the grandeur of the piece that he decided to pick up ‘brush and canvas’ and become a painter himself at 52!
From seeing the work at an exhibition, he went straight to a store, bought colours and canvases and began painting the same day. Driven by instinct, he soon began creating pictures. In the next six months, this newly-turned painter went on to make 40 odd paintings.
A selection of these paintings, by a ‘beginner’, recently featured in an art exhibition in Katara Cultural Village complex’s Amphitheatre.
Meet Keramat Andalibi, the Iranian-Dutch expatriate, who is a Computer Engineer by profession, and a painter by passion. He has proven that age is just a number after all.
“One day in 2014, my life changed when my wife inspired me to start painting. The first one was just a bit lousy, but then I started enjoying my journey into the world of colours on canvas,” Andalibi tells Community. “I like the way colours dance in my hand on the canvas and I have started loving this process of creativity,” he adds.
We are sitting in a café close to the venue of his first exhibition and he keeps looking in that direction every now and then while narrating his story.
Before 2014, Andalibi had never even touched a paint brush. He has never studied any art and has no orientation on how the process works. Yet, his hands began moving like that of a painter once the art form fired his imagination.
Andalibi has created at least one of his paintings, that he named ‘Sense’, with — wait till you hear this — eyes closed! He now creates his own colour combinations by mixing the basic three colours. From the initial realism in his ideas, he is now moving on to more abstract form. Such is the level of his indulgence in his new-found love.
Narrating the story of how he found it, Andalibi says it all began one fine day earlier this year when his family was visiting him from The Netherlands. They went to see Katara and here they visited an art gallery where one painting caught their attention.
Andalibi, moved by the beauty of the artwork, asked his wife what if he too starts painting and creating pieces of art like the one that had caught their eye. She liked the idea and encouraged him to unleash himself.
After trying his hand at a few images already in his mind, Andalibi thought he was just a beginner perhaps, and needed to learn the techniques from an expert. He went to Rashmi Agarwal, an artist and head of Middle East Art and Silk Painters (MAPS) society in Qatar, and asked her to teach him.
The artist in him was willing to endure the process of learning, which normally takes time, to get to a certain level of skill from where he could let unleash his talent. Agarwal agreed to give him a few lessons. However, once he showed her a ‘sample’ of his work, she changed her mind.
“No, she said, you do not need lessons. You are already perfect,” Andalibi recalls the artist as saying. It was she who encouraged him to showcase his work at the upcoming exhibition, the Colours of Desert Art and Painting, organised by MAPS in Katara, featuring works of 25 artists of different nationalities. Reluctantly, he agreed to it.
“I was nervous because I thought I was just a beginner and I did not know how people would react, especially given the work of so many professional artists. To my surprise, however, people liked what I offered. Many came to me and appreciated it,” recalls Andalibi.
One of the advantages of starting late was that he already had a clutch of ideas to go with, and his personal collection, that he wanted to paint once he took up the brush. The ‘Drops’ exhibition featured the paintings that he created from the images he retrieved from the internet. Andalibi managed to make them look closer to the actual photographed images, in essence.
It was his selection of colours, the proportion of the amount of the pigment used in creating the painting and striking a balance between strokes that enabled him to keep those images life-like on the canvas. Yet, all of this comes naturally to this self-taught artist. He has never learned mixing or selection of colours from anyone.
Andalibi mostly paints with acrylic and silk. “Acrylic is faster. Oil paint takes time to finish a work and, in the beginning, my energy level was massive. I wanted to create more and more paintings in no time,” Andalibi says, explaining his medium of choice.
“I love painting on silk. It is magical. The paint just flows in it. It is just like you spread different streams of paint on the surface of water, and then, with one hand, you mix them together to create images. The colours just dance on silk,” he goes on to add.
Like a beginner, Andalibi wants to put as much ‘reality’ as possible into his paintings. However, unlike a beginner, he does not struggle to achieve his goal. In one of his paintings, he even went to the extent of using real wood to depict a tree trunk and he managed it well.
This six-month-old artist is inspired by nature and whatever is beautiful in it. Animals, in particular, attract his attention and he has painted a lot of them. He has an allure for water in different forms such as sea, streams, rain or mere drops of water.
“Life is beautiful and life does not last long without water. It is the source of existence. Water drops are life and we have to protect them. We are not weaker than a frog which, in one of my paintings, acts as guard for a water drop,” says Andalibi.
Born in a small city in Iran in 1962, Andalibi moved to The Netherlands in the early 90s where his family still lives. Since then, the necessity to earn a living has taken him to many places before he finally, landed in Doha two years ago.
Once at a very young age, Andalibi recalls he had a brief chance to venture into art, but circumstances held him back.
“I and a friend of mine took our career decisions at the same time. He chose art and is a very good painter today. One half of me wanted to go for art, too, but the other half resisted and it prevailed. I finally went to pursue a career in computer engineering. Then onwards, I never thought about art until recently,” Andalibi says matter-of-factly.
Andalibi does not exactly regret realising his natural talent a little late in the day because he always looks to the future. He has eight more years of professional life left, he says, as he does not intend to work beyond 60.
“After 60, I just want to relax and give more time to painting. If you work after 60, it is like you die before death and I do not want to die that death,” says the artist.
He feels there is so much to explore and learn in the world of art and he has just gotten his knack. He intends to experiment with various mediums and techniques in this process of creativity.
In the life story of Andalibi, the underlying message to all those who seek inspiration is that it is never too late to pursue your passions in life.
