The dance of Shiva

The Nataraja, or dancing form of Shiva is full of mystery, strength and grace. A young artist Himanshu Rai, makes various modern day variations in fiberglass of the dancing form of Shiva, or just small installations by using a few features from the Nataraja.

I saw his works at an exhibition at the Lalit Kala Akademi and found him hugely talented.
What was a distinguishing feature in Himanshu's works was the fluidity, strength and beauty that we associate with the dance, or Nritya of Nataraja.


Himanshu also works a lot on the illustration and animation fronts. One could see the influences in several of his sculptures.

What I also found very interesting were the modern day avatars of Devis and Devatas with all sorts of paraphernalia. They were life size figures and looked straight out of a sci-fi movie!

The story of Madurai

I was familiar with photographs of the facade of the famous Meenakshi temple of Madurai, or photographs of the Madurai skyline showing Meenakshi temple. But for pictures that tell a story about Madurai, you should see the work of Manohar Devadoss:

I chanced upon his work because of an article about him in The Hindu. But I got impressed more and more about the man as I read about his life. Struck by a "retinis pigmentosa",  a degenerative eye disease as a teenager, and hardly able to see now, Manohar

Devadoss has continued his work aided by special tools and strong halogen lights.
His wife Mahema initiated him into oil painting in the 1960's, and supported him in all his writing and drawing, but a cruel accident when the family was driving from Chennai to Madurai, paralyzed her from neck downwards. This was in 1972.

Not one give up, Manohar has produced hundreds of drawings, and also written several books. His wife Mahema continued to support as much as she could in both writing and drawing activities for more than three decades, with all her disabilities.

Manohar lost his wife about six years back, but continues to write and draw as much as he can. The Hindu article came about after the recent publication of his latest work "From an artist's perspective". He has described in the book his understanding of the concept of perspective in art.






As I browsed through his work, I got glimpses of life in the the city of Madurai which is a backdrop for a lot of his work. The sketches reproduced here are to record some of this admiration for an exceptional artist and his work.







http://www.thehindu.com/books/literary-review/sketch-and-the-city/article6274889.ece

http://www.maduraimessenger.org/printed-version/2012/december/in-conversation/