(MENAFN- Muscat Daily) There's something about the clouds that made writer Sami Jaffer fall in love with them. He does not know exactly what but the romance stirred him enough to capture its scattered patterns on his camera.
Sometimes he was mesmerised by how clouds filtered the luminous glow of the sun; on other occasions he was taken in by the heavy grey of this undulating mass that painted Oman's skyline in full flourish. Jaffer's cloud series continued playing out on his Instagram profile where his pictures told the story of his inspiration until he was approached by artist Tania Hens and writer Jacqui Oneill.
The two women were collaborating on project that none of them had attempted before. Jacqui would be the voice to Tania's paintings or at least her poetry would. Jaffer's cloud photography was intended to complete the vast composition of their work.
That's how the trio came together for the first of a three-part art exhibition series inspired by Oman. Titled 'Time to be Enchanted' the first exhibition at the Crowne Plaza Muscat (on till April 13) is seeing three mediums come together – painting literature and photography - in a brave and rarely explored format.
It will be followed by 'Desert Dreams' and 'Spirit of Oman' where two other photographers Hilary White and Hamed al Wardi are set to showcase their works alongside Tania and Jacqui. 'I first met Tania at a creative writing course.
We immediately hit it off. Because we weren't working then we had a lot of time on our hands and were looking at what we could possibly do' says Jacqui while speaking of how the idea of the exhibition germinated. Tania enjoyed painting and had also showcased her works before while Jacqui had published a few of her writings in magazines.
'So we planned on coming out with a coffee table book where I would give words to her paintings. But we weren't really sure of how receptive our readers would be to a book so we decided to come up with an exhibition instead.'
Both of them were quite moved by Oman and decided to make it the central theme of their work. 'I come from New Zealand and have visited a few beautiful places across the world including Britain. But there was something about Oman that I hadn't seen anywhere else. Somehow I felt closer here. It also had a lot to do with having the time to appreciate the beauty around me' Jacqui says.
The result was a series of 33 paintings and poems by Tania and Jacqui respectively which captured the magnificence of the region. The sun-kissed skies and rough seas that are imagined in Jacqui's verses are all translated visually through Tania's paintings.
'We worked together on all our works. Sometimes she was inspired by my words and I by her paintings. It was a simultaneous process. For the most part we had a very similar vision which made it easier to work with each other' she says. Jaffer got on board much later when the duo was looking at inviting other artists who were equally captivated with the place they had begun to call home.
'We wanted our exhibition to be a platform to showcase other mediums too' says Jacqui. 'His work was refreshing and in sync with our theme.'
Interestingly Jaffer a published author of a children's novel saw photography as an exercise that he took on whenever he sought for some inspiration for his writing. It wasn't long before he realised his fascination for clouds and started using his phone and DSLR cameras to freeze them to frame.
'The original collection of clouds started out on Instagram as an attempt to capture Oman as a cloudy country. People always see the place has having lovely clear blue skies everyday. I think I wanted to counter that notion' he says.
'We have a lot of good weather and we have rain too. Luckily over the last two years we've witnessed some good clouds and that allowed me to showcase what I had in mind.'
Even with such a simple subject there is variety that one gets to see in Jaffer's work. The over-exposed grainy filtered images of clouds amidst the silhouetted landscape stand out for their bold and striking palette. While he has grouped some of his smaller Instagram photographs in twos and threes he has blown up the others and displayed them as standalones. Jaffer considers himself as an amateur in the field but doesn't shy away from calling himself a photographer.
'To be a photographer you just have to take pictures. And to be a good photographer you just have to be confident about the pictures. It is really up to you. It just boils down to whether you like what you take or whether you are confident about what you have taken to put up on a wall' he says.
All the three have printed their works on canvas. Jacqui deliberately refrained from writing on Tania's originals. The two instead worked on a computer software to merge their creations.
'People are becoming a lot more open to mashing their genres and mixing the mediums. This might be the future of art in general' says Jacqui adding that art is all about experimenting without diminishing the value of what the artist wants to convey.
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