Zamshiya Kaleel:

Interpreting the spirit of nature

Zamshiya Kaleel absorbed into her soul the earth warm sunlight and above all the rugged scenery and its artistic treasures, the land of palm trees the deep blue sea of her native place where she was born in the sprawling city of Jaffna, on December 9, 1957.

The pictures, the statues and the buildings suffered under the ugly war that has been tormenting the peninsula for nearly three decades. Few cities in the world were better calculated to feed the eyes of a growing artist with the wonder of beauty.

What was unique, in Zamshiya's case is that it's quite rare for a practising Muslim woman to enter the domain of art. The combination of being from Jaffna, a female and Muslim makes it all the more unusual.

At a very tender age she got her first art lesson from her father Sultan Mohideen, a humble Education Ministry official from Jaffna. He was also an artist. Zamshiya obtained her preliminary education from Vembadi Girls High School, Jaffna, and after her A/Levels she came to Colombo and became a member of the Ceylon Society of Arts.

Here she met the art instructor Pulasthi Ediriweera who became her mentor and guru, who taught her the basics of oil painting and brought her up to where she is now. Under her art teacher Zamshiya gained a vast knowledge on oil painting and encouraged her to have her first exhibition organised by the Art Society.

Today she is an expert in brush work. She painted the homely scenes of life in town and country. They were quite liberal, almost photographic in their representations.

The texture of a brick in a wall, the minute description of a cobblestone in a street, the sunset, the bullock cart rider, a woman carrying a pot of water on her head and the cobbler are some of her outstanding paintings.

These she painted with amazing craftsmanship. And they were the medium of light and shadow. They brought splendour to the viewer by the colours spread on her canvas diligently.

Zamshiya would fix her eyes on the Dutch barges that sailed lazily down the Negombo lagoon, green fields, gray buildings, the old Dutch fortress in Galle, and the gloomy weather-beaten old light house, the sunset were rough, honest nature that begged to be worthy of representation on her canvas. It is amazing a female and a Muslim from the remote village of Inuvill in Jaffna to interpret the spirit of nature so accurately and so splendidly on canvas.

The recent exhibition at The National Art Gallery baffled art lovers and visitors.

'Nature's Odysey' was the title of the exhibition which proved to put her thoughts, and experience into expressions that conveyed the deepest emotions.