In the artistic sensibility of Syed Iqbal one discovers a passionate minstrel, a ceaseless traveler who preaches the eternal unity of homo sapiens. This impression can be had from his solo exhibitions. Though oil compositions dominate his works, he freely moves in other mediums as well like oil pastel, charcoal, water colour and pen and ink. Perhaps there is no different opinion about the fact that oil is his forte; but then he creates drawings with equal effortless ease.

All art is said to be constantly aspiring to the condition of music; and one becomes at one with this view of Walter Peter as one watches the monoprint work titled Crucified Civilization. His favorite work Dissolve is done in a soothing and harmonious blend of blue, transparent ash and sap green thus anticipating a lyrical mood. It portrays delicately organized play of luminosity in orange and bright yellow in the main.

Nostalgia permeates his stylised forms displayed at the Montreal solo show which he named "Turn Around, O Bangladesh." This he so conceived because crunching poverty grips his motherland where the majority of the people are underfed, undernourished and ill-clad. In a word, the world advances but the quarter-century old nation is still lagging behind many countries economically. "There must be an end to political demagogy. No more murderous clashes like dogs and beasts," he said. In one of the ten oil creations a pigeon with a human head struggles to come out of a cage. Green and red, the colours of the national flag, have been used in all the compositions.

It was a sheer pastime for that historic figure. To a professional artist, who chooses to be so of his own volition, the approach is never the same. A passionate urge sort of dictates him to create or give expression to his thoughts and emotions. Perhaps a germ of insatiable curiosity about all manner of things and people and places run through his veins. When an ordinary mortal finds nothing unusual in the countenance of an individual who is often ignored, an artist with his meticulous and at times discerning sight and insight discovers lines, intricate wrinkles, protruding whiskers and peculiar features of his face-the shape of his nose, eyes and ears thus introducing person. Unable to explain the method of painting and with out an ambition to create masterpieces, Sir Winston Churchill once said that when he would get to heaven he should spend a considerable portion of his first million years in painting. Having had almost two decades of ecstatic experience of working with paint and brush Iqbal feels he is still a beginner.

A gifted writer of fiction - he has published two novels and three collections of tales so far- Iqbal firmly believes that nearest the throne itself must be the footstool of humility. Soft-spoken and self-effacing, the artist is opposed to pessimism and degeneration. His world of abstraction articulates, mostly in primary colours, the craving for a new age of progress in his motherland. He understands that there is no virtue which poverty does not destroy.

The perfect good is indeed the exercise of virtue. "As a freedom fighter I feel that political freedom is not enough because majority of the people of my country are still underprivileged. So we must strive hard to march ahead and prosper," concludes Iqbal.