Energy seemed to be flowing from Belinda Eaton’s brush on to the canvases which she painted. This can be witnessed at a solo exhibition at Canvas Gallery, Karachi by the British artist. She has been associated with the world of art for more than three decades during this period she has interacted with various people and experienced many different cultures as she has lived in Barcelona, France, London, New York, Karachi and Mombassa, Kenya, where she was born. Nowadays she is living between England and Andalucia, Spain. Therefore, her current work on display reflected distinct and unusual portraits of people – men and women.

Consisting of paintings she painted from 2015-2018 the works revealed emotional energies of people that transformed into painting by Eaton. The liveliness of her paintings attracted viewers. No matter what was the theme of her paintings the compositions were so clear, distinct and vivid that the viewer stop at every painting to view it in detail.

Her paintings were the amalgamation of her conscious and subconscious. A wide variety of patterns, compositions, subjects and colours were scattered throughout her canvases. She used strikingly bright and intense colours in her paintings balancing them with white, black and grey. She skilfully created magical effects with light and shadow giving a rare appeal to her paintings.

Some of her portraits have tattoos on the body and face showing her interest in tattoos. There were tattoos of chrysanthemums on face and body of people other than floral patterns. Every painting was emotion infused. Accept a few paintings the people in each painting seemed to be staring at the viewers

She mostly emphasised on the faces of people, their inner feelings were revealed mainly by their eyes other than facial expressions. The eyes say it all. The backgrounds of the paintings also play a major part which help in understanding the theme of the painting. She very carefully selected the venue of her character and than paint that character along with the supporting environment in the background hence creating an atmosphere for the subject as well as the viewers.

She used symbolic language also to explain her theme by using certain fruits and birds like grapes, pomegranate, parrot and Hoopoe bird and fish. The dress patterns also say a lot about the subject. By combining these symbols, patterns and colours together a vivid image appeared on the canvases that wanted to tell many unspoken stories to the viewers.

Eaton carefully weaves a story around her character and created magic realism paintings that mesmerize the viewers. One can feel the energy of people depicted in her paintings. They actually seemed to be present in front of you while living their life full of colours and energy – drinking, eating and dancing. Portraits in her paintings were engaged in some type of personal issues or living common daily life moments. And she captured those alone personal moments in her paintings.

Painting is alive for her she sees it as a person who begins his/her life and meets an end. Just like that when she started to paint a painting the life of that paintings begins and as she add character, symbols, patterns, background and colours slowly and gradually the painting move towards its completion thus going through a process as a person lives through time and had many different experiences during that time some good others bad the painting also revealed the same. When she finished painting it meet its end just like life. Now a painting captured a life story to be seen and understood by others. So every painting is a journey and she liked to travel often.

NADEEM ZUBERI – Oct 27th, 2018

Source: fp.brecorder.com