ever since he made a sudden shift to painting# what he's lived, felt, and sometimes even feared.

He gave special correspondent Jared Bowen# of GBH Boston a tour of his ongoing exhibit.

It's for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

JARED BOWEN: The paintings of# Salman Toor are about worlds,## worlds of lovers, of friends out on the# town, and of family.

But, in of ten envelopes in emerald haze, there# is even more at play, some ecstasy here,## some danger there and in pieces like# Back Lawn, there's a labyrinth of layers.

SALMAN TOOR, Artist: There are many novels# and movies about houses like this.

And I## wanted to kind of take the story of the# family as the background of another story,## which was going to be in the foreground# of, which doesn't usually get told.

JARED BOWEN: Front and center# here, steps away from what could## be a Pakistani family like his own,# two me SALMAN TOOR: Instead of being like a# moment of fear and hiding, it's more## like everything else is in the background,# really, and this is actually the real story.

JARED BOWEN: Call it No Ordinary Love, the# title of this show exhibiting Toor's most## recent work at Brandeis University's# Rose Art Museum outside Boston.

SALMAN TOOR: Maybe about three or four years# ago, I decided to make semi-autobiographical## paintings that were about being more out as a# gay man through my paintings than I w JARED BOWEN: They're a far cry from growing up# in his native Pakistan, and from his early work,## when Toor labored over paintings inspired# by 17th and 18th century masters.

Coming out artistically meant coming into his own## and launching into these largely# nocturnal notions of queer life.

GANNIT ANKORI, Rose Art Museum: There is# something very bold and edgy about the works,## drop-dead beautiful, also# painful, but very tender.

JARED BOWEN: Gannit Ankori is the museum's# director and has been watching Toor's rise## in the art world,especially since his first solo# exhibition at New York's Whitney Museum GANNIT ANKORI: He found a visual# vocabulary that articulates the## life of a queer brown man living between# his homeland and diaspora and creating a## community and visualizing that# community on his own terms.

JARED BOWEN: One that mostly unfolds a world away# from Pakistan, where homosexuali y is punished by## law, but where Toor found safety and camaraderie# among queer friends in his high school art room.

SALMAN TOOR: We were all queer.

We were all# out to each other.

And in an environment that## was pretty harsh otherwise, I think that we# were able to create a very magica JARED BOWEN: That magic dances through his# paintings featuring close-knit friends at bars,## in cars, and hanging at home, their# joy swelling in a series he has## titled Fag Puddles reappropriating# a hate-filled word into something: SALMAN TOOR: Like a fabulous heap of, like,# exhaustion.

And to me, it's fun to kind of## fill it, that hate with objects that are# fun to paint for me.

I am thinking about## like a feather boa or laundry, anything that's# really fun, like a disco ball or something.

JARED BOWEN: Hate and danger creep into Toor's# work.

It's a residue of the fear he felt as a## queer man in Pakistan and a reflection of the# anti-LGBTQ+ violence escalating here in the U.S.

But rendering it on the canvas,# Toor says, is therapeutic.

SALMAN TOOR: It's a way to seize control back and# to be able to be the master of that narra JARED BOWEN: Which is why we also find a# lot of comedic relief in his paintings,## figures with Pinocchio-like noses,# cartoonish hair and rubbery limbs.

SALMAN TOOR: I do have a sense of# humor as a person.

I'm not -- I## don't take myself that seriously.# And I do take my work So it's important to me that the works about# any kind of pain or suffering doesn't get## bogged down in any kind of one-dimensional# pity or sanctimoniousness of any kind.

JARED BOWEN: Pain is often drowned out in this# show by love.

If Toor's paintings are a novel,## there is a meaningful chapter on family.

In this work titled The Women, we# see a boy lingering around gossipy exchanges of his mother and aunts.# Toor still owns it and won't let it go, he says, because it's too rooted in memory.

SALMAN TOOR: It's someone kind of# looking at themselves maybe in a## deeper way in the mirror at that moment# than they do usually.

And it's a moment,# I feel like, in which someone finds# themselves beautiful in a mirror.

JARED BOWEN: It's also a portrait# of the artist as a young man on## the verge of launching into a world all his own.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Jared# Bowen in Waltham, Massachusetts.