Brush with success

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Sacha Jafri’s paintings regularly fetch between $104,000 and $416,000, with some of his more recent works going for as much as $900,000.

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Sacha Jafri’s extensive list of high-profile fans includes Britain’s Prince Charles, and globally renowned design icon Sir Terence Conran.

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Sacha Jafri’s extensive list of high-profile fans includes Britain’s Prince Charles, and globally renowned design icon Sir Terence Conran.

But feeding the subconscious does not always include clocking up air miles. He once travelled from Ireland to Siberia and back, armed with nothing more than GBP5 ($6.90), a guitar, pastel chalks, roller blades and a note book.

A former skier in what is now called the X Games, Jafri knew how to use a pair of rollerblades. And so he began his journey by doing rollerblade stunts and putting his hat out.

In Italy, he played the guitar until a restaurant owner asked him how much money he would need to go away and never come back. "Because I cannot play the guitar at all. I'm terrible," the painter admits, laughing.

In Pisa he struck a deal with another restaurant owner, who would give him a pizza every night in exchange for a drawing, Jafri remembers.

"You make friends. Money is this very strange thing - if you take it away amazing things happen. I made a lot of friends as I went and I got put up everywhere for free," he says.

The accommodation wasn't always glamorous, though; Jafri spent two nights in a police cell in Pisa, after his landlord at the time had a "massive fight" with his girlfriend, which ended in the police station. "They dealt with them Italian-style, gave them a slap and then sent them home," he says.

Having no desire to go back, he asked the policemen if he could stay there for the night.

In Dubai, Jafri is working on his new collection, but also trying to get some rest. "I hit a wall about a year ago," he says.

"It's no coincidence that a lot of artists that make it don't last above the age of 40. They burn out. The ten-year retrospective actually gives me a rest."

So what's so tiring about being one of the best-paid painters in the world?

"Every year and a half you are faced with fourteen blank canvases," he says.

"It has to be magical, it has to be special, it has to be a one off, it has to be something that touches people's souls forever. And that's quite a lot of pressure."

In Dubai, the art scene is too commercial and the lack of an art museum is keeping the city from becoming a global hub for artists, he says.

But he lauds the recently launched Tashkeel centre for artists, and points out that some of the best art in the world is available to see, for anyone willing to take a trip to Sharjah Art Museum.

Among the artists to have shown their work there is world renowned photographer Andreas Gursky.

"They've got one of the world's six top museums of modern art, showing the greatest art you'll see. You'll see the same art in the Guggenheim, in the MET in New York and the Tate Modern in London," he says. One problem: few people, including the media, seem to know about it.

"The press don't even know it exists. Art editors don't even know it exists. That is unbelievable," he says.

The region's hotels could provide a boost to the local art scene by buying and displaying good work, but have yet to do so, he notes.

The result: an art scene that is too dominated by gallerists trying to grow their businesses in a short period of time.

"Art is the one thing you cannot create quickly. It can't connect with human beings quickly. That was the mistake of shock art in England in the 1990s, it was a complete disaster. It doesn't engage you, it doesn't engage the soul."

To that end, the current state of the international economy could be a good thing for the Gulf's artists.

"This economic meltdown is a very good thing for this region because it will force people to slow down. It will force them to assess what they've done and who they are," Jafri says.

Art Dubai, the city's annual contemporary art fair, takes place from March 18 to 21 at Madinat Jumeirah.

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