Professional rickshaw painter Rafiqul Islam, from Narinda in Dhaka, has put his artworks on display at the Craft Fair in the Nalini Kanata Bhattashali auditorium in Bangladesh National Museum, which will end on Saturday.
At one time, he used to earn his bread by painting rickshaw boards at different shops at Narinda. But now, like many other professional rickshaw painters, Rafiqul Islam also paints canvases following the style of rickshaw boards as decorative items for the elite.
It is a kind of transformation of his profession, which has a significant impact on his work. Before he would paint portraits of actors and animals with bold lines but these days he paints landscapes blending aesthetics with his age-old professional knowledge.
In an interview with New Age, Islam shared his past and present as a rickshaw painter.
According to Islam, he started his career as a rickshaw painter three decades ago in his teens under the guidance of his maternal uncle named Alauddin. ‘We used to pass busy hours and hardly had any break at the garages. Painting the rickshaw boards, I used to earn taka 200 in a day, which was considered a handsome income in the 1980s.’
‘But, after the introduction of the cheap digitally made painted boards, owners of the rickshaws don’t buy hand-painted rickshaw boards. As a result, hundreds of professional rickshaw painters have left the job. I’m one of the very few painters, who still have shops. But, there aren’t many buyers. So, it’s very difficult to run a family depending on such shops,’ Rafiqul Islam told New Age.
Thanks to the interest of the experimental artists of the contemporary time, a new window has opened for professional rickshaw painters like Rafiqul Islam. Many art lovers these days are commissioning the traditional rickshaw painters to paint artworks.
‘It takes four days to finish a painting perfectly and the price varies from two to four thousand. But, we occasionally get such orders,’ the artisan said.
‘I draw movie scenes, animals, natural scenes, the Tajmahal and other images only with acrylic or oil colours following my professional skill as a rickshaw painter. Sometimes, foreigners living in the country are the main buyers,’ he added.
But, Rafiqul Islam does not want that his three children take up his profession. ‘I always advise them to go to the school and read attentively,’ Rafiqul Islam.
Rafiqul Islam participated in the Setouchi International Art Festival in Japan last July along with 38 Bangladeshi craft artists. ‘I displayed my rickshaw paintings there and they were highly appreciated by the Japanese,’ said Rafiqul Islam.
-With New Age input
