JAMALI Mystical Expressionism Paintings

Jamali grew up in the ancient crossroads city of Peshawar, near the Khyber Pass in the northwestern Himalayas. At age 13, he was sent to a British military academy from which he was expelled at age 16. He went to live in primitive and austere conditions in the Rajasthan desert for five years, and from there he went to Kafiristan, a tiny valley high in the Himalayas. In 1973, he travelled extensively in Europe, then emigrated to the United States and became a U.S. citizen. Since then he has lived in Winter Park, Florida. Jamali has created a large body of work in several innovative techniques. His works are in 1500 private collections in the United States. He brings together mysticism and quantum mechanics in a beautiful and powerful chthonic art. This convergence is the subject of Donald Kuspit's essay. Kuspit says, "Jamali's saturated, esoteric paintings-- many are literally weighty as well as iconographically exotic-- have their necessary place in our secular world: they are among the important mystical efforts to save humankind from itself by restoring its sense of the divine possibilities of being-- the possibility of being divine while being all too human."