"SHOW me yours and I'll show you mine!"
Undoubtedly a risque line to the uninformed, but artist Haris Rashid and I were simply comparing our brand of colour pencils. His eyes glinting, he lifts his box of pencils to the camera and declares wth a grin: "These are simply awesome!"
There's a look of unsuppressed glee in his eyes. "Do you paint?" he asks curiously. "Not as well as you obviously," I respond quickly. He grins before replying: "That shouldn't stop you." Sage advice indeed. After all, a lack of fine art training didn't stop him from creating an oeuvre of work that's both fantastical and beautiful.
Using colour pencils, watercolour and acrylic paints coupled with some of the most unlikely of canvasses, including kain pelikat (sarong), wood, corals, glass and rattan mat, among other things, Haris's vibrant mixed-media offerings at his latest solo exhibition, 3:33 take you on a journey into his mind.
Both beautiful and with an element of strangeness that falls within the territory of surrealism, Haris's paintings venture into dreams and the unconscious, using symbols, numerology, myths and metaphors.
But we aren't simply trapped in an over-determined bleak dystopia where we know that terrible things can happen. Instead, we're in a giddy, colourful, surrealist, world of make-believe where anything can happen. "If I were to describe my art, I'd land on pop surrealism," he muses.
At first, surrealism and popular culture would seem to be oil and water. Surrealism mines dreams and the unconscious, while popular culture is concerned with surface and commonplaces. But in recent years, they've been brought together in exhibitions concerned with proving that High and Low are related.
For the young artist, the union is a given. Surrealist ideas have become part and parcel of everyday life; his art, while often edgy, is also self-assured. It's a recipe for a good time.
The very thing, of course, we could certainly use during these uncertain times.
With the recent lockdowns imposed since January 13, the exhibition at Zhan Art Space in Petaling Jaya has since moved to the gallery's Instagram page, where one artwork will be posted every day until March 7 — the exhibition's original end date.
The artist isn't deterred. "I'm just as excited to showcase my work," he enthuses. "The exhibition is a reflection of myself and how I see the world."
EARLY INSPIRATIONS
"I view the world differently," he confides again, shrugging his shoulders. Awkward introductions and formalities have been dispensed with the showing of colour pencils. Now he's simply happy to talk candidly about inspirations and life.
He admits to always being different. "I was diagnosed with mild dyslexia," he reveals, confessing that growing up, he preferred drawing and doodling to studying. Dyslexia causes reading and spelling challenges, and he admits that his struggles often led him to cling on to an "alternate" reality to cope.
"I saw the world differently from other people. It led to a lot of internal struggles growing up," he reveals quietly. Did he stick out like a sore thumb among his peers at school? I ask. "Oh definitely! I think I hung on to my childhood a lot longer than most of my schoolmates," he replies, smiling.
There were days he refused to communicate with his friends. "I'd only answer them by writing notes," he recalls, laughing, adding: "My parents were naturally worried. I really was a weird kid in school back then!"
For Haris, legends and myths offer a rich lode of imagery to be mined and mixed at will. The spell of the narratives resides in their promise of imaginative freedom. "Growing up, I believed in fairy tales," he says candidly, adding: "I had an active imagination and I loved fairies, and all fantastical creatures."
Continuing, he muses: "They formed my alternate reality and I supplied characters with whom I could make new associations. It was my world. A different reality from the one I faced in real life, where I couldn't fit in."
As tough as his growing up years were, dyslexia soon became a blessing in disguise for the second (and only son) of three siblings. "I eventually realised that dyslexia doesn't prohibit anything. My family encouraged me to find my strengths while working around my weaknesses," he adds.
But when I ask him about his parents, Haris gets oddly reticent. "My father is a writer," he answers carefully. "A writer?" I perk up. "He was the former group editor of the New Straits Times..." confesses the 29-year-old sheepishly.
I should've known. He looks like a proverbial chip of the old block. His mother is a high school art teacher. "She even taught me art at school," he reveals, grinning wryly. "Teacher's kid and all. That of course curbed my freedom a lot at school!"
Despite the support, the need to conform to expectations took over when it came to picking a suitable college course. "I picked architecture!" he admits ruefully. "It was the closest I could get to being creative, and something any traditional Asian parents would accept. I mean, architecture is both a respectable and creative profession, right?"
Chuckling, he goes on to share that he couldn't qualify for that course. Instead, he was offered Textile and Technology ("I had NO idea what that was about!") and then — in a stranger twist of fate — the quota for the course was unexpectedly full and he was, instead, offered a Diploma course in Science. "Crazy, right?" he remarks, shaking his head in disbelief. "Of course, I left lah!"
Haris eventually signed up for a Diploma in Illustration. "I enjoyed it at first," he remembers. But as the course steered towards digital art, animation and storyboarding, he grew restless. "I found myself wanting to work with my hands. I liked the traditional medium more," he explains. In his second year at college, Haris took up painting. "I didn't have any fine art training, so I started to pick up the rudiments by myself," he recalls.
"But I didn't want to be a full-time artist!" he continues vehemently. Why not? His mother had studied art and design back in university and had many artist friends. She used to take Haris to meet them and he has such vivid memories of those encounters.
"I remembered seeing them really struggle to make ends meet. I mean, this was the perfect representation of what a 'struggling artist' meant! I didn't want that for myself," he says soberly.
AN ARTIST EMERGES
Upon graduation, Haris went on to work at the popular online clothing store, Zalora, as a photo re-toucher. "I was good at it but I didn't enjoy it. I quit after one month!" he admits.
His father wasn't happy at all. "You either study or get a job!" the patriarch issued a stern ultimatum. "I asked him if he could give me a year to figure my life out, and he agreed!" he recounts, chuckling.
As it were, he'd already started selling prints of his artworks at bazaars around the capital city, including the Fuyo Art Bazaar at Publika. Over time, Haris slowly developed his oeuvre of artworks — large enough to exhibit.
"I was 21," he recalls, grinning. "I wasn't afraid to take risks. Maybe my dyslexic background helped. After all, what had I got to lose?" If nothing else, the expectation of failure many dyslexics learn at school means they're more willing to take a risk and try new things."
He wanted to exhibit his works and the brash artist emailed all the galleries in the Klang Valley asking if he could do so at their premise. The results weren't encouraging. Most galleries prefer artists with fine arts background.
"I was naive and thought it'd be easy," he confesses. "Instead, I received plenty of rejections and even criticism for daring to think I could exhibit my works without the necessary qualifications."
One gallery finally accepted him. "It was new gallery and they were keen on showcasing young talents. They took a chance on me and I did my first solo exhibition there," he shares.
The one-year ultimatum ended with that exhibition, and his father became his staunchest supporter. "My dad invited Tun Daim Zainuddin (Malaysia's former finance minister) who's a family friend as well as a big art enthusiast and collector. He officiated the exhibition and many people attended because they were curious to find out who this young upstart was!"
The solo exhibition was a resounding success. The gallery also brought Haris' work across Asia, which further stamped his reputation as an upcoming artist in the region. He hasn't looked back since.
These days, he's a full-time artist. "It took some time to convince my parents that being an artist can pay the bills and be a stable profession," he says, smiling. His father would still prefer him to draw landscapes, he tells me as an aside, laughing heartily.
His mother, however, would critique his work. "I mean, she'd be the first to point out if my perspectives were wrong!" he adds. "You should just tell her: 'But that's art, mum. There are no rules!'" I suggest and he looks aghast. "You should never argue with her!" he exclaims, shaking his head.
But he does have something in common with his mother. "People associate me with the batik style of painting flowers. It's really my mother's influence. When I look back at her early studies in university, the way she drew her flowers were quite similar. I see where I get that from!" he recounts, not without a little pride.
Talent goes a long way, but so does discipline. To Haris, it's a career he's serious at cultivating and he sticks to a routine that keeps him busy creating art every day. "You don't have to wait for inspiration," he attests. "Treat it as a nine-to-five job and keep at it. You may not be creating 'masterpieces' all the time. But at least you're working. That's the discipline I learnt from my art academy. You keep working at your art… that's why they call it art — WORK!"
When he's not creating, he spends time in the garden. "If I wasn't an artist, I'd probably be a gardener or something like that. I love gardening and my room looks like a virtual jungle!" he remarks, grinning.
Significant numbers of artists have discovered that being part of the late 21st century also means being in touch with one's cultural traditions, emotions and imagination. Haris is one of those artists for whom these ideas have been important elements in his development.
"I've always loved fantasy. Whenever I create, my fantasies come alive," he says, eyes sparkling. "I've surrounded myself with fantasy growing up. It's only natural to have that element featured in my work."
"Duality" is another word that comes up frequently in connection with his artworks. "I love to talk about opposing natures and how they exist in all of us. Masculinity and femininity, violence and peace, death and life," he explains.
Adding, He says: "My idea of death is quite poetic… it's even beautiful. People may think it's the most tragic story to tell, but I think there's beauty in it. There's always that kind of duality in my work."
A pause and he continues: "I struggled with a lot of things growing up. But now, I've finally accepted the fact that like my art, I've got so much of duality that co-exists within me. I want to tell people that it's okay if you have contradictory extremes within yourself."
Like the colour white that includes all the hues of the spectrum, artists like Haris tend to bring together the entire range of human possibilities within themselves. "It's not a bad thing," he tells me, concluding with a quip: "We're complicated like that!"
HARIS RASHID 3:33 SOLO EXHIBITION
Where: ZHAN Art I Space
100-G.025, Block J, The School, Jaya One
No. 72A, Jalan Universiti, Petaling Jaya
Until: March 28
Visiting Hours: Mon-Sun, 10am – 3pm
Outside working hours, by appointment only.