Mystic Moves

The painter, who took his name from the original Jamali, a Sufi mystic of the 12th century, lived as a youth for five years in the Rajasthan desert with Sufis, who practice a form of dancing that induces an ecstatic, visionary trance. Shortly after the death of his Sufi father in 1976, the young Jamali had the first of a series of dreams that changed his life. The messages and poems that came to him in the dreams, he says, led him to go out and buy art materials.

As he told one interviewer, "It was like I knew for centuries how to paint. So I knew it was not me who was painting; and even now, I believe that in my best painting from the moment I go in and leave, I have not been there."

Nevertheless, in the past 25 years or so, the artist known as Jamali has created more than 14,000 paintings, many of them outside of his Winter Park home. He first prepares a ground of pure tempera pigments, on which he dances. Leaves, twigs and the remains of insects attach to the surfaces of the paintings as they "gestate" outside. They become, the artist says, "the landscape of my dreams." To many observers, they have the look of prehistoric cave paintings. Art critic Donald Kuspit has labeled the artist's style "Mystic Expressionism."

Aside from his dream/dance frescoes, Jamali also creates cork paintings. For these he mixes pure paint and a suspension of water and wheat glue with his feet inside his cork canvas until the cork curls around him; then unwraps the cork and scratches his images into it with pointed sticks and fingernails. Bronzes, ceramics and photographs are also housed within his 25,000-square-foot studio, which he calls "Art and Peace, Inc." Many have ended up in more than 1,500 private collections in the U.S.

The Bonita Springs gallery is only a few months old, and the first of several planned around the country to solely represent Jamali's work. For more information, call 947-8053.