Landscape painting has constantly been a romance in the vast green plains of the Punjab. The panorama and the crisp light, that keeps on changing with every passing minute, has always spellbound the onlooker, to a degree, of mesmerism. Today we can find various styles and techniques in this genre owing to different approaches of the practitioners. In the preliminary period of its evolution, the landscape painting in Pakistan was just confined, either to the conventional backdrop of the miniature paintings, or to the modern theories of realistic renderings that the British officers brought to this part of the world during the Colonial era. Later, in the early years of Pakistani Art, various academicians like Anna Molka Ahmed and Khalid Iqbal introduced the young and very enthusiastic art students to the emotional charge of 'Expressionism' and the serenity of 'Modern Realism' subsequently.
In and after 1970s, Zubeda Javed emerged as the harbinger of change with her relatively new and somehow avant-garde approach in landscape painting, mainly based on the imagination and memories of the painter, rather than to paint 'on the spot' to capture various tonalities and shades of atmosphere and light.
Raja Najan is a landscape painter who seems to be inspired by the legacy of those painters who prefer to paint with an urge or motivation. He is an admirer of nature who breaths in the atmosphere that he paints as his subject matter. His palette truly represents the shades and hues of colourful flora, serenity of the sky and the romance of floating clouds. In few of his canvases, Najam is seen standing far away from any notable patch of earth or soil and concentrating on the grey contours of the salt-range mountains of his abode; Chakwal. He is found deeply involved in a love-affair with clouds, painted in the soft and subtle light of the dusk.
It does not mean that Najam is always looking upward with no connection to the soil where he stands to paint. One can find many canvases with trees and bushes of delightful colours or the enchantingly lavish appearance of the green fields. Najam is keen in presenting the flora or the vegetation as the vehicle to express the longed-for tranquility that the human instinct and psychology need, especially in the haste of today's modern life.
Najam is among those painters who are obsessed with nature around them or in other words; they paint to resist the unfathomable beauty of nature and its fascination. The more a painter sinks in this immeasurable magnetism, the more he or she becomes restive to represent it. Najam paints soil, vegetation, reflections and clouds, in every shade that he likes.
However, his handling of light seems impulsive; when he concentrates to reproduce clouds, he unleashes his brush across the canvas in a pleasant manner to capture subtle and delicate tonalities whereas in his exposé of land or soil, the colours become relatively sharper and robust.
Najam's landscapes in general represent a nostalgic feeling associated with the places the artist would have visited prior to painting them. These places appear to be the ideal locations to live alone, the environs displays the barren beauty; the splendor that is usually associated with fantasies, and can only be admired in the solitude. The mountains and clouds enticed forlorn journeys that are not destination bound.
As far as the technique of the painter is concerned, Najam's visual idiom is based on the realistic approach, from his observation to the rendering on the canvas. It is a common observation that most of the landscape painters of the Punjab have been realistic in their technique. However, those who have been skilled and trained in academic institutions have gone one step further in their realistic style to explore the Modern Realism as their style, following the modus operandi of the legendary Khalid Iqbal. Modern Realism deals with the effects of light on the painter, of that spot, where he stands to paint, which ultimately evolve his or her palette. Painters related to Modern Realism prefer to paint with naturalistic and somehow subdued colours in their pursuit to render the atmospheric effect. On the other hand, the intentional concern of Realist painters to paint objects like trees, flowers, rocks and soil in their representational colours, normally appear sharper to the onlooker's eye.
Najam applies the technique of a 'Modern Realist' when he paints clouds over the mountains at a distance. However, when he paints bushes, trees and soil that are nearby him in a candid manner, he becomes a strident in his style and a 'Realist' in his approach.
Najam is a self-taught artist who paints with a passion, developed as a result of his love for nature and its beauty. His main concern is to express and share the splendor of the surroundings where he lives or wanders around, at times therefore; he seems a narrator of what he sees and sometime a versifier of what he perceives.
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