Pir Tareen, the artist who paints with light

'Una pittura luminosa'

Story by Kate Collins
Photographs by Karol Gawlick
News Magazine: Sunday Mail Color
Date: 24 March 1985
Front Page Article - Pages (Cover) 1 , 2 and 3.

 Pir Tareen has a masterly touch in portraying the emotive power of light, color and shade as shown in this work, part of his "Brisbane Summer" exhibition at Dabbles on Days Gallery, Grange.

"I am a simple perfectionist... my main concerns are light, color and shade"

You don’t have to speak Italian to understand what Italy’s leading art critic meant when he described a Pir Tareen painting as “una pittura luminosa”. One look at the work of this prize winning artist confirms the luminous quality which, the critic added, captures a fountain of light.

Light simply glows our of Tareen’s landscapes, spilling out of the sky and settling in sunny pools on suburban rooftops or dappling cool interiors with brilliant patchworks of color.

With light, Tareen creates the “universal del bellow - the universe of beauty that won him such critical acclaim during his four years of painting in Italy. Undoubtedly it was his masterly handling of the emotive power of light in his portrait of the Pope that led to its inclusion in the Vatican’s own collection.

Tareen, whose winning streak began with a scholarship to study in Italy in 1976. He moved to Australia in 1981. Exchanging the warm terracotta tones of Rome for Brisbane’s blinding mid day dazzle provided no problem for the adaptable Tareen. He has continued winning prizes from the minute he set foot here.

Since scooping a first and second prize at Toowoomba in 1981, he has gone on to take several regional awards, the 1982 Caltex City of Brisbane first Prize, the 1984 Ian Fairweather Memorial Prize and he is included in the SGIO Award Collection.

The secret of his undiminished success seems simple: “I am a simple perfectionist,” he explains. “My main concerns have always been light, form and color.”
An uncomplicated recipe, perhaps, but in Tareen’s case it has complex and intricate foundations in European Art Philosophy and a centuries old technical art tradition in Calligraphy.

Pir Tareen was taught by his father in Calligraphy Art Form. Later Tareen began studying from an acknowledged master in Calligraphy. The legacy of this training in the expressive use of pure line is crystal clear, ironically, in the least seen of Tareen’s works: a folio of charcoal drawings, black and white lino cuts and small etchings completed in Rome.

These works conceal an aspect of Tareen’s talent unhinted at in his impressionist landscape and classical portraits. Lightning fast studies of animals in the Rome zoo, or eddying currents in the River Tiber, they are executed with a single, continuous line – stunningly simple, breathtakingly alive!

In an echo of the renaissance masters like Leonardo, whom he studied in Rome, Tareen says of these drawings: “I believe an artist must return constantly to Nature – that is the Great Teacher. I disagree with those abstract expressionists who paint always behind a closed door.”

The process of artistic observation is explained by Tareen – like many of his training – in terms of conscious technique and subconscious creativity.

“You cannot learn to create. It is an involuntary, innate capacity. When I am painting, I’m not thinking consciously of the act, but of the subject – a beautiful tree, a face. The technique, if successful, looks after itself. That is why, if an art student asks a self taught artist about positive or negative space, the self taught artist wont know what he is talking about. He simply paints what he feels. Mistakes occur, panic or frustration ruin a painting when an artist tires too consciously to think of technique.”

Tareen’s latest exhibition, “Brisbane Summer,” at Dabbles on Days Gallery, 185 Days Road, Grange, illustrates the long term success of his own philosophy. A couple of paintings date from Rome, and one of these, a female head, is a triumph of expressive coloring.

Above: Painting from the  "Brisbane Summer" Exhibition by Pir Tareen. "I believe an artist must return constantly to Nature, which is the great Teacher," says Tareen.

The face and neck are modeled in light and shadow – masterly palette suggesting the fragile juncture of jaw or collarbone, or the sensuous weight of blond hair in flickering blue, ochre r gold. Tareen uses the same colorist alchemy in a face captured in a Brisbane setting.

Only when the artist isolates recurring features, like the blue green shadow of a smile, do the subtle structures of his composition emerge. To the observer’s eye, color, form and light remain integrated in a shimmering whole.

The shimmer is dramatic, a low key frenzy of energy, in some of the mid afternoon suburban landscapes Tareen in exhibiting. Oscillating points or daubs of pure color carry the eye bouncing across a high tensile surface like a water mirage over blistering bitumen. But the emotional heat generated is never harsh – it’s a celebration of a unique Brisbane phenomenon.