A recent National Art Award winner, Usman Saeed's work in the field of miniature art is extraordinary. While totally committed to a modern ethos, he maintains the elegant skills and sensitive perception of the miniature masters of old. Painting in sequences strands of hair from a painted comb are used to depict rain on a mountain landscape; the delicate designs of lace table linen perhaps act as reference to dowries of bygone eras. Young as he is, the artist is no stranger to love and loss, a theme that threads his work as the leitmotif butterflies found in many of his miniature pieces.

Musical metaphors, photo images, and delicate linear patterns are found in Usman Saeed's aesthetic vocabulary. In a solo exhibition of his work at the Canvas Gallery, the artist invites guests beyond the illusion of a prepared and perfect stage to enter `the peace within chaos' as he refers to backstage. Here is where the action is. Describing Usman's viewpoint is a painting 'Unplugged Stones', a narrative focused on a guitar formed of song lyrics that have personal connotations. A golden, glowing line that runs through the instrument links the artist's two engaging 'worlds'. A tracery of exquisite, pencil drawn lines act as loose wires and switches that are as subtle as fine rain or tears. So much is tenderly suggested as associations and interpretations of dreams and memories are mingled in a fantasy of imaginative invention.

This exhibition reveals the artist's amazing versatility and diverse experience as a painter and simultaneously a fashion photographer. Exemplifying these aspects is an artwork intricately bordered, showing two sides of a profile; one the artist's photograph cut and pasted on the wasli; the other executed in a simplified linear painting. A statement on two equal but opposite realities which sum up the many facets of the multi-talented artist: the teacher, miniaturist, fashion photographer and make-up specialist who uses the human skin as his canvas.