You may have heard of the great movements in the world of fine art, like Impressionism and Romanticism. According to Central Florida-based fine artist Jamali, there's also Mystical Expressionism - his movement, built around the use of organic paints, elements of nature, and spreading peace through art.
There's also literal movement involved: Jamali is famous for dancing on his paintings.
He writes all about it in his new autobiography Jamali, A Mystical Journey of Hope, chronicling his life from his childhood in the western Himalayas, to his experiences in the New York art world, to now.
Jamali’s fine arts gallery in Winter Park is massive - part art exhibition, part art warehouse and part art retail and shipping venture. There are a handful of staff members bustling from room to cavernous room, and there are hundreds of Jamal's paintings, textured, colorful, most of them far taller than me.
He tells me his style was born in the 1970s, during a particularly meaningful walk in upstate New York forest, just after the death of his father.
Jamali:
I know I'm looking at the soil. I know I'm looking at the leaves. I'm looking at the twigs and looking at the insects, I'm looking at the critters. I said, oh, let's bring all these together. This is art. And I did.
Nicole Darden Creston:
Tell me about the technique of dancing on your paintings.
Jamali:
After high school, I told my mom, I'm leaving the world, I'm going away. Because I really want to go. We live in the mountains in the western Himalayas. Now I want to go to the desert with the sand, just open sand. And I stayed there for five years after high school in the Registan desert, and I built a little village, and I brought canvas and paint along with my three bodyguards. But I never painted.
Nicole Darden Creston:
Why?
Jamali:
I was in the painting. There was no need to paint.
Nicole Darden Creston:
You were in the painting?
Jamali:
I was living in the painting. I was the painting. But one day in the afternoon, I am sleeping and I thought, oh, I need to get up. I got up and went and sat down under a tree. And then I'm looking in the desert and see this man, he's walking towards me, all in white, and he cleared an area in the sand. He took off his shoes, and he started to dance, no music, nothing. He's dancing. And I'm looking at him and he's dancing and I am saying, Oh my God, these movements. I've never experienced these movements. And what kind of a vision is this? It was that experience that I knew, oh, nature, sand desert, dancing… and I bought powder paints, not liquid paints, and I put them on the floor. And I started to dance on the painting.
Nicole Darden Creston:
What brought you to Central Florida?
Jamali:
I went to school at UF in a master's program. And then I said, you know, to hell with this! I have the education, I have everything. Why am I hurting myself? You know, I'm in America. It is the land of dreams. You build your dreams, and I need to build my dreams. So, one day one of these guys said, oh, let's go to Winter Park. Let's go there. And we're walking on Park Avenue. And I'm looking at everything and I said you know what, this feels like home. You know, of course I became a New York artist, but Winter Park has been my home base.
Nicole Darden Creston:
What is it that prompted you to write an autobiography?
Jamali:
I used to have art dreams. And I have experienced so many near death episodes. Right? And somehow, every time I escaped death, I began to realize that when you increase death, you increase life. There is no need to be afraid of death. When you get closer to death, you get closer to life. I need to share this with humanity. There is a beautiful message. Unfortunately, you know, we have sanitized death and dying in this culture.
Nicole Darden Creston:
Does that inform your work?
Jamali:
One hundred percent. By making these images, I'm facing death with art. It lives on forever. And when my sister was dying in Rome, I took care of her. And when I came back, I created a painting called Journey of Hope. Then it became my story, my mystical journey. So you know, here she is like the angel and here I am on the side. I was looking at these photographs of American Indians, the natives, and I saw one picture of this chief, he had this big garland of skulls around his neck. And these are his ancestors. So he's getting his ancestors around his chest, and they're protecting him. They're providing him strength. So when you own death, you become strong. So high art goes to the mountain, and then becomes the spirit, which lives forever.
Nicole Darden Creston:
It seems that you had some experiences in New York, that were very intolerant in nature. Do you find that that is a continuing issue in the high art world?
Jamali:
It is a real issue of its kind, which is peculiar to our culture in America or civilization in America. And the answers are right there in the facts - we look at the Native Americans, then we look at the African Americans, then we look at the wars, so it's not going away anywhere. This is us. We own it. We need to face it. That's a fact of life. You know, two weeks ago, I asked my son, I said, Do you think that here in America, there will be a time where there will be no war? He says, No, there'll be no time. I asked Karen and she said yes, but it will take 2000 years. Then they asked me. I said…I'm working on it.
