An exuberant blending of opulent shapes and dazzling color combinations reverberate from the walls of Karachi Gallery, where Ahmed Zoay has exhibited twenty-five acrylic paintings on the large-scale canvas surfaces. The artist’s lush figures are created from sweeping lines, impasto dots and marks that form traces of ethnic patterns articulates with decorative feeling. Zoay’s images are intense, referring to an elemental passion that transcends human emotions.

Ahmed Zoay is a square peg in today’s art set-up, belonging as he does to the ethos of Bashir Mirza and Ahmed Parvez. Those were the artists he could hang out with, colorful eccentrics no longer around, alas to enliven the art scene. Zoay describes long-gone friends and acquaintances met during the years he spent tripping around the world. Impatient to savor life, Zoay left his art studies at the National College of Art, Lahore in 1971, and embarked on the hippy trail, journeying through Afghanistan and Turkey, on to Germany and many other parts of the world. He hitchhiked, going wherever the rides took him, over long stretches of road, through numerous towns and rural areas. He fell in with diverse groups, met up with characters that put him in touch with others of their ilk in various other countries.

He related his story in a ‘stream of consciousness’ flow:
I met this guy with a long beard and we went to the beach and cut some stuff and smokes, and it was good…His name was Gunther, he has been travelling for twelve years and he gave me an address in Munich and told me to go there and say: Gunther sent me. I went there and the woman cried; it was his ex-wife and she took me to another house and they gave me space…” Breaking off, he gazes into the distance in a reverie, then comes back to ask me: “What were we talking about?”

Three years of a nomadic existence passed before Zoay returned to Lahore in 1974 where he was employed by the National College of Art. With the job went the opportunity to spend time in Kalash Valley, where he carved forms from blocks of wood and confirmed his belief in supremacy of nature. His first solo exhibition of sculpture and paintings was held in Lahore in 1974. He stayed around until 1977, and then took off again with everything he deemed necessary for living crammed into a knapsack carried on his shoulders. Zoay never stayed long in any one space; crossing boundaries and borders as the urge took him.

His drawing skills earned him a welcome among the groups of ‘flower children’, as they were known in those days; he sketched their portraits and drew impressions of sights that attracted his eyes on the trail. There were solo exhibitions of his work in Germany, and in the ‘80s he exhibited work executed in a variety of media in Holland, Sweden and Italy. He describes his meeting with a lovely young woman, who married him and then moved on, taking her pet Alsatian with her. No hearts were broken, and as Zoay looks back on an era that witnessed young people of all nationalities moving around the world, his memories are welcome companions.

The travelers formed groups, separated and regrouped like amoebae reproducing. In their company, Zoay sought the sun, easy living and sandy beaches where they spread their gear and camped. Everything was shared. Desiring to expand their minds, they practiced consciousness-raising exercises. Their keywords were ‘turn on, tune in…’ they aspired to embrace all of humanity and eschew violence. The flower children shared a universal language that assimilated words like: love, peace, freedom and joy. They walked barefoot and saw rainbows. Similar in appearance, they grew their hair long, wore kurtas and bands across their foreheads – the girls with long flowered skirts. They played guitars, were vegetarians and preached against the materialism of ‘gainful employment’ while dreaming of a simpler, more loving world. When the sun deserted them, they took off for youth hostels filled with like-minded young people from around the world.

On a boat travelling to Norway, Zoay met a young woman who was to become a close friend. She was an intellectual with no desire for close ties, and soon she too, moved on. Zoay described his amazement when recently Margret, as she was named, traced him from an article on his work and e-mailed him from Naples. They are in close touch again, but unlikely to meet in the foreseeable future. Zoay’s travels belong to the same era as Bashir Mirza’s inspiration for the ‘Lonely Girl’ series, and of Ahmed Parvez unable to handle the stresses of success in a foreign capital, each to return to his roots.

It was the time of a proliferation of art in Pakistan, when the seeds of an art market were sown. It was a unique time in history that ended with the 1980’s. Hostility, often manifested by violence, accompanied an upsurge of racism that drove Zoay back in Pakistan.
The artist’s apartment is furnished with paintings that are stacked against every wall. Large piles of scrapbooks carry reviews of his work written in many languages. Photographs and faded newspapers reveal a curly haired young man with a gentle expression. He relates his interest in the mythology and symbols of diverse cultures.

As a child, he discovered Greek mythology and was visited by dreams filled with fantastic images. He talks of his research and the conclusion he reached that the true Sindhu culture belonging to the Indus Valley area was appropriated by successive invaders from the times of Aryans on. His palette of primary colors – true blues, reds and yellows and the secondary shades of violet, green and orange – reflect distant memories of his mother; a recollection of the childish delight found in the bright skeins of skills she used for embroidery.

Impressions of the fragmented components found in the miniature paintings: parrots, pointed leaves, flowers and architecture comprise the artist’s vocabulary, representing the germ of all things that with the will to create imply a cosmic energy related to the triangles that symbolize the first mystic art of creation.