Tajammul

Tajammul was born in the 1950’s in Lahore, Pakistan and later moved to London, where he has lived for the past four decades. He is largely self-taught and in 1999, following a solo exhibition, Quranic Paintings, at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, he gave up  his career as a chartered certified accountant in order to become a full-time artist.

Tajammul’s work gives visual expression to the Verses of the Holy Quran, revealing the mystical meaning of its Verses. Historically, the Quran has almost never been illustrated with pictures.  The artist uses patterns and designs rooted in the language of Quranic illumination and particular choices of colour as a background to the ancient Sacred scripts used for inscribing the Quran.  These scripts are Kufic, Thuluth and Muhaqqaq.  The usage of these scripts and the rich backgrounds assist in making the painting wholly accessible to the viewer.

For Tajammul, calligraphy and its illumination as a sacred art is dependent on mysticism and colour symbolism. The symbolic quality of the colours and designs clarify the meaning of each text and re-affirm and illustrate the depths of the Quranic Verses.

Examples of his work are to be found in the collections of the Ashmolean Museum, the Glasgow group of Museums, the British Museum in London, the State Collection of Tunisia and the National Library in Lahore, Pakistan. Tajammul teaches at post- graduate level at the Prince's School of Traditional Arts.