Accelerating through Acrylics

Whilst working in batik, Jaafar also painted a lot in acrylics. Sometimes he used both acrylics and batik processes in the same work. Jaafar eventually grew more partial to acrylics, commenting in a newspaper interview that traditional batik took too long, and he was interested in exploring the relationship between batik and acrylic colour, and balancing the two. Perhaps he was also frustrated by the fact that despite the time taken to create batik paintings, they faded relatively quickly due to the dyes used, and many of his works were losing their original colours. Acrylics also allowed Jaafar greater speed, immediacy and spontaneity. Jaafar once said his paintings mirrored his inner landscape and emotions. You get a hint of this from the titles of his painting series: Wandering, Vision, Odyssey, Opera, Drama, Transcendental, Metamorphosis. These two paintings in front of you are from Jaafar’s Vision series painted in the mid-1980s. Notice how the bright contrasting colours and dynamic brushstrokes almost seem to pulsate with movement and life? With their complex angular and curvilineal forms and vibrant colours, Jaafar’s paintings here mirrored the frenetic energy and bright lights of Singapore, as it rapidly modernised in the 1980s. Like our tireless city-state, Jaafar’s paintings also conveyed a feel of urgency, always racing against time, or in his own words, “time fighting against time.”