The sound of water

"Meeting", 42"X40", Watercolour on paper, 2007, by Paresh Maity

At the retrospective of Paresh Maity's water colours, currently on at Lalit Kala Akademi, what impresses you immediately are the large oceanscapes.


The fluidity of the medium is just right for large expanses of sky, and boats lying on the beach. There are a few figures and foliage here and there, but they are totally in harmony with the main part of the composition, which is expanses of sky and water.


What a sharp contrast to the uniformly grey skies of Delhi, the polluted air and the cacophony of vehicles!

Urban children can probably not imagine such greens and blues, or the serenity of palms and still water.

"Talsari", 24"X30", Watercolour on paper, 2002, by Paresh Maity

Paresh Maity has been a prolific artist. His works are with the National Gallery of Modern Art, and various international and national galleries. He is active in painting, sculpture, installations as well as photography.




He is known as India's "best water colour painter", and most of his water colours are about "waterscapes" from rural Bengal, though he does capture images from Kerala, and Venice amongst other places.

Palm Avenue, 31"X31", Watercolour on board, 2008, by Paresh Maity

Water, boats, and boatmen and at the most a few palms remain his favourite subjects. However, a visit to Rajasthan seems to have made a deep impression on him, and he made a number of "desertscapes".



Since he has been painting for forty years, the styles have changed over the years; also he has a huge repertoire: broad strokes and dramatic skies, brush strokes and scruffy vegetation, or fine lines and a few crouching figures, all creating drama on the canvas.

"Family discussion", 36"X60", Oil on canvas, 2012, by Paresh Maity

Paresh Maity's oil paintings are striking with their bold colours, and the firm lines of the human faces. He uses a lot of reds, blues, yellows, and all in pretty resplendent hues.


The subjects here are mainly faces and figures in human settings, and also scenes from Indian cities, specially Benares.

"Reflection on water", 60"X60", Oil on canvas,2015 by Paresh Maity

When I caught up recently with the Paresh Maity retrospective, what I enjoyed as much as the paintings was this video. It had the sounds of water, just as the paintings had the visual experience. Both had captured the serenity, joyfulness, playfulness and timelessness of the flow and web of waves at a shore, and you could just be a part of the flow...do have a look at:

A video installation at Paresh Maity's retrospective

The banker and the artist

Krishen Khanna was working with the Grindlays Bank in Mumbai, when he came in contact with an artist group of friends, and later became a part of the Progressive Arts Group. Largely a self-taught artist, he had strong ideas of his own what he wanted to paint and what he did not. He moonlighted for a long time, working weekdays at the Bank and painting on the weekends and in the evenings, before deciding to quit the Bank, and became a full time artist.

Untitled, Oil on canvas, by Krishen Khanna

He painted about whatever affected him: The partition of India that displaced human lives like rag dolls on a humongous scale; the band-wallahs or musicians who walked with the Baraatis, or the wedding guests, faceless men whom the guests would not spare a second glance at; the chai-dhaba the small tea-shop, where they were all young artists together: M F Hussia, F. N. Souza, S. H. Raza, Akbar Padamsee and he himself, where they drank gallons of tea, and talked of everything.

The last bite, Oil on canvas, by Krishen Khanna

Untitled by Krishen Khanna

Each of Krishen Khanna's works told a story. There was another reason I took a special interest in his art! My first job was as a banker (State Bank of India) and I always was an artist within as well, and I knew you could do many things at the same time, and at times you made choices. I was intrigued recently, to come across several stories outside India, of bankers-cum or bankers-turned artists. Obviously they interested me and I am sharing some of them here:



William Savage made his decision to turn into an artists when his finance firm Babcock & Brown closed shop. Before that he was a nattily dressed artist rather than a hungry, paint splattered one. He was in San Francisco, had being doing water colours, and had just sold his first painting, and there was hope. So when Babock & Brown closed down, he dived into full time art.

(https://www.theguardian.com/careers/careers-blog/career-change-banking-professional-artist)

Bridge cafe by William Savage

Marko Remec joined Morgan Stanley after business school and was a banker for 25 years before turning full time sculptor.

For this work on a New York street, he combined steel dome safety mirrors and utility poles, to make a statement on urban paranoia and narcissism.

He had painted in college too, and was always an artist, as well as a banker.

(http://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/banker-to-artist_b_2916978)

"You are not the boss of me": Tree totem by Marko Remec

Martie Datu worked at a multinational bank and her father's investment firm, but now her work station looks very different. It is full of images from her childhood, and of happy children straddling her present background of skyscrapers, metros and urban parks.

(http://business.inquirer.net/201754/banker-turned-artist-finds-her-niche)

Martie Datu's current work station

Evidently, for those of you straddling two boats or even three boats, it is fine; do what is right for you: you can take the plunge whenever.

Or keep managing a heady mix!

Suhas Roy and his mystical compositions

Artist Suhas Roy who passed away in Kolkatta earlier this month, at the age of 80, was known in the last few years primarily for his Radha series. Though Radha Rani has been worshipped as a goddess, a Devi, the most powerful association in our minds is of Radha as an embodiment of pure love and devotion to Shri Krishna.

Radha, Mixed media, 10 by 12 in.

The word Radha is said to have come from Aradha (worship or homage) and Aradhana (paying homage). The love of Radha for Krishna is eternal, spontaneous, and like Bhakti (or devotion). Suhas Roy's paintings of Radha try to capture this devotion, longing and Bhakti, and bring a mix of youth, innocence and a dream like quality, in the figures.

Dry pastel, 48 by 36 cm.

Suhas Roy studied at the Indian College of Arts and Draughtsmanship, Kolkatta, and also at the Ecole Superior des Beaux Arts, Paris. He had been the Head of Department of Painting, at Kala Bhavan, Shantiniketan, till he retired.

Christ - 1, Conte on board, 20 by 30 in.

Suhas Roy travelled extensively in Europe, US and Japan, and was hugely impressed by the Great Masters, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael. Particularly the Pieta influenced Suhas Roy so much, that for several years, he sketched and painted his own versions of The Lamentation.


What is not known widely is that one of his paintings from his series at the time, "Through the Gospel", forms a part of the collection of The Vatican. Suhas Roy published a book of his paintings created during that period of personal journey called: "A Solitary Quest".

Christ, Oil on canvas, 56 by 41 cm.

Suhas Roy was born in Dhaka, and like many artists of his generation hit by partition of India, the loss stayed with him all his life. Several of his early compositions in water colours are inspired by the Bangladesh countryside.

A water colour

Suhas Roy will be remembered and missed for his mystical imagery, the wide range of textures and materials used, and for the simplicity of his compositions.

Face to face with Yusuf Arakkal

Bangalore based artist Yusuf Arakkal was always interested in the human figure and human faces. He decided recently, to do a collection of portraits of fellow artists.

Portrait of Thota Vaikuntam

Here is one of his drawings: of the artist Thota Vaikuntam, captured at work.

Portraits are rare nowadays. The theme of fellow artists was also an unusual one.


All the portraits by Arakkal were pen and ink drawings using lines, and dots - no colours and no shading. They were drawn on reversed canvas, and executed in a 'framed-box' approach. Generally, it was all black ink, and single-tone backgrounds.

Portrait of Syed Haider Raza

The collection of 135 portraits were on show at an exhibition called "Faces of Creativity", at Chennai, last month. Arakkal desired that the entire collection should be sold to a single collector or to an institution, to be available for viewing in its entirety.


The timing of the project was remarkable, given the news of his untimely demise today morning. It almost seems to be like a farewell gift from Arakkal to his fellow artists.

Yusuf Arakkal was born in Kerala. His mother belonged to a royal family, said to be the only Muslim family, descended from the royal family of Chirakkal. His father belonged to the Muslim business family Keyees, famous in Calicut and Thalassery.

Young Arakkal was looked after well at his family home, but ran away as a teenager to Bangalore, driven by a desire to live life on his own terms, in the streets and alleys of the city, and to learn painting.



Young Arakkal studied at the Chitrakala Parishath, Bangalore. The linework was always strong, as in this portrait. He was fond of drawing, and he knew the strength of lines.

It was probably due to the influence of his early years', that several of his works showed the urban poor, the social outcasts and the alienated.

Hope, Screenprint by Yusuf Arakkal

There was an air of despondency hanging in the air, even in the fine art-print he called 'Hope'. This print was created for the project 'Break the silence' by Art-for-humanity, an HIV-AIDS initiative.

An untitled oil-on-canvas by Arakkal

Like the surroundings of his teenage areas, the walls and backgrounds in Arakkal's paintings often reminded us of peeling plaster, dirty cracking walls, and old, often dirty, make shift belongings.

They told a story.

The face of war

Andre Breton was one of the original group of Surrealists who introduced the ideas of automatism and intuitive art making. He championed the cause of "found objects", mixed media, collages and chace associations. He also championed the use of art as anti-war statements.



The Surrealist movement gave rise to several pieces of work like Salvador Dali's 'Retrospective bust of a woman' (1933). A baguette crowns the head of the woman. Cobs of corn dangle on both sides of her face. Ants swarm along her face, as if gathering the crumbs.
On top of all, is balanced an ink-well with a praying couple.


The movement also gave rise to the use of non-conventional materials in art and sculpture, like the wax sculpture by Edgar Degas, 'Little dancer of fourteen years' (1881), dressed in a real tutu skirt, a bodice, a wig of real hair, and with real ballet slippers. 28 bronze repetitions of the sculpture have been made since then by major museums around the world, for exhibition purposes.

A recent sculpture using 'found objects', by 33 year old artist, entitled "The face of war" has captured the imagination of critics, fellow artists and art lovers around the world.


Russian President Vladimir Putin is the face of war in the 2-metre high portrait created by Ukrainian artist Daria Marchenko. The portrait has been made using 5000 bullet cartridges brought in from the frontline in eastern Ukraine. The first few shells were sent to Daria by her boyfriend, a member of the Euromaidan movement that worked against the corrupt and unpopular government of Viktor Yanukovych.


Now many of Daria's friends fighting across Ukraine send her bombs, grenades, shells and other war materials that they find, for use in her future compositions.

For Daria, each shell is the face of war, symbolising some one wounded or killed. She uses a hand-held light to cast interesting, elongated shadows across the portrait. Sometimes the shadows throw deep shadows around Putin's eyes, making them more sinister; at times, they make the face angular, more energetic and aggressive; and sometimes the shadows make the mouth more cruel.

The portrait has eight kinds of cartridges, some corroded and copper coloured, some quite new and glistening gold. As people look at the changing expressions of Putin's portrait in the moving light- sometimes proud, at times contemplative, they have their own thoughts about the nearly 7,000 people killed so far in the Ukraine conflict.

The portrait is a dominating presence in Daria's studio.

"Sleeping in the same room with him was a bit scary at first," said Daria in a recent interview, "But I got used to it."

Raza and the Circle of Life

The artist Syed Haider Raza started off painting landscapes, but some time in his journey into metaphysics and the biology, he chose the "Bindu", or the central point of energy, as his chief symbol, and the circles of life to surround it, as his theme of work.

He said the "Bindu" was like the seed, the beginning of all life, that contained everything that would "ever be".

He added in his works later, concepts of the "Tribhuj" or sacred triangle, as well as symbols of Purusha and Prakriti (the male and female forms of energy). All in resplendent acrylics and oils.

Raza lived in France for more than six decades, and exhibited there extensively. He returned to India only in 2010. But as far as his thinking and his compositions went, he was always in India. He remarked on his return, that he "had never left".

He died a few days back, on the 23rd July, 2016, at the ripe old age of 94. Interestingly, apart from the last two months when he was seriously ill, and towards the end he was in fact on life support, Raza painted every singly day of his adult life! He said his job was to paint, and his day must "begin and end with art". Even after his return to India, Raza was exhibiting fresh paintings every year.

Raza at his studio

Like many artists who become famous towards the end of life, Raza had seen many ups and downs in life. Few know that for some time, to make ends meet, he even taught Hindi in France! 

What will be remembered surely, is that in 2010, one of his paintings "Saurashtra" sold for a staggering $34.87 Million at a Christie's auction.

From the Saurashtra series

And I somehow remembered another circle of life, the song from "The Lion King", with its spectacular opening lines in the Zulu language, and that ended with a universal message:

"....It's the circle of life

And it moves us all

Through despair and hope

Through faith and love

Till we find our place

On the path unwinding

In the circle

The circle of life."

For the love of Vincent

Vincent Van Gogh died at the young age of 37, after having shot himself with a revolver, in the wheat fields of Auvers-sur-Oise.

Paul Gauguin’s portrait of Van Gogh, Oil on canvas, 1888.

Painted when Gauguin visited Van Gogh at Arles.

Whether it was the circumstances of his death, or the stories of his life, of unrequited love affairs, of not having the money to paint or sometimes even to feed himself, Van Gogh is remembered as the lonely, unloved, hugely talented artist.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s portrait of Van Gogh, Pastel on cardboard, 1887. 

 His most loved paintings are of the fields of Arles, sunflowers and cypresses, and star-lit nights. He obviously loved painting portraits, and produced several self-portraits, writing to his sister that he “should like to paint portraits which appear after a century to people living then as apparitions…..I do not endeavor to achieve this through photographic resemblance, but my means of our impassioned emotions- that is to say using our knowledge and our modern taste for color as a means of arriving at the expression and the intensification of the character…”

It is for the “impassioned emotions” on display whether Van Gogh was painting cherry trees and orchards, his bedroom in Arles, a night café or the bridge over the river Rhone, that he is loved so much. Some of this love has translated to an international collaborative project called “Loving Vicent”:

http://join.lovingvincent.com/

About a hundred artists have got together to hand-paint about 57,000 frames, in the style of Van Gogh, and capturing locations, people and  vignettes from his short life, to form an animated film. It is probably the first animated movie of its type, built entirely from these lovingly painted frames. You could catch a glimpse of the trailer of the movie at:

https://youtu.be/47h6pQ6StCk

“The red vineyard” by Vincent Van Gogh, Oil on canvas, 1888. 

This was the only painting sold by Van Gogh while he was alive!

“The night café” by Vincent Van Gogh, Oil on canvas, 1888.

In a letter to his brother Theo, Van Gogh wrote: "In my picture of The Night Café I have tried to express the idea that the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad or commit a crime. So I have tried to express, as it were, the powers of darkness in a low public house, by soft Louis XV green and malachite, contrasting with yellow-green and harsh blue-greens, and all this in an atmosphere like a devil's furnace, of pale sulphur. And all with an appearance of Japanese gaiety, and the good nature of Tartarin."

Black and White, and Red

The colour black is traditionally a negative colour, the colour of gloom. Just like white is the colour of purity, the colour of bliss. Black, white and all the shades of grey can together convey a whole gamut of emotions.

Add a swirl of red, and it creates drama in the visual. Red conveys warmth, aggression and life.

Anup Kumar Singh restricts his palette to these colours, black, white, red, and some shades in between. His recent exhibition at the Triveni Kala Sangam, New Delhi, was about men, women, animals and the environment, and the way these mingled. Red was used effectively to create the right sense of dramatic action, and highlighting.

Most of the works were on paper, and used watercolour, pencils and acrylics, He did add some times a few shades of other basic colours like yellow and green here, but they were rather muted, and only accentuated the shades of grey, or black and white, and of course red. 

The mystery of Ginkgo

The ginkgo is called a living fossil, and is recognizable to similar fossils dating back to 270 million years! There are some ginkgo trees 2500 years old. The tenacity of the ginkgo tree is best described by the fact that six ginkgo trees that were in the 1-2 km range from the 1945 Hiroshima atom bomb area were some of the few things to survive! Though somewhat charred, they revived to tell the tale.

Artist Sundeepa is understandably enamored by the ginkgo tree, and most of all, its unique fan shaped leaf.


The leaves of the ginkgo are unique: they do not have the usual network we are familiar with.

Two veins start at the vein, and keep forking out, and spreading out into the fan shape of the leaf.

Sundeepa uses her huge collection of ginkgo leaves to add an interesting colored and textured background to her compositions, and sometimes in the main composition itself.

She has a wide variety of colours to choose from. The ginkgo leaves turn a lovely gold in autumn and fall in a heap on the ground. Sometimes all the leaves fall within a few days!

Sundeepa's compositions are usually woven around the central theme of the Buddha, and some of them are purely to celebrate the colours and shape of the ginkgo leaf.

While the ginkgo has been with us right since Jurassic times, several variants are now found across the world, with slight differences in shades of the leaf. So they provide sufficient material for Sundeepa's palette.

Ginkgo trees are large and majestic, and it is easy to see why there are so many stories around them.

It was good to see them being presented with an artist's perspective. The exhibition is on at the Habitat Center, Delhi.

The viewer gets to see a different style of paintings. And also, comes away with a heightened sense of the mystery about the ancient ginkgo.

Stardust in your eyes

"We are all made of stardust," says Sabyasachi Gosh. His works take you to the beginning of time, which the artist interprets as a fluidity and formlessness. He depicts this formlessness in vibrant bold colours, with a technique of his own, using acrylics and oils on canvas.

 The colours mix and flow into one another in wondrous ways, creating mysterious images.

The exhibition of Sabyasachi's works at the Habitat Centre, Delhi, has three distinct areas. One area contains abstracts inspired by the cosmos, and the process of creation of the universe.


The other area focuses on types of "terrain". Apart from several interesting textures, this section has many interesting compositions, like this one:

You can see two figures- one young and one old, trying to rip into this huge green textured area, and of course, the rest is up to the viewer's vivid imagination.



The third area has all sorts of interesting portraits, like this old man with his thick glasses.

There are quite a few such unique characters in this section.

The artist is based at Agra, and the exhibition showed his huge range and mastery over the medium. 

A Grasshopper and Metamorphosis

During the seven days of my exhibition at the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, I had a ring side view of the sculpture exhibition on at the Foyer area. A young talented sculptor called Biswajit Bej was exhibiting his works there and his works included several hard backed insects like a grasshopper and a pair of dung beetles:


                                                                                                                                                                     
The grasshopper was sculpted out of wood, and looked ready to spring. With its size, and stance, it would remind me of Kafka's "Metamorphosis", and whenever not busy with visitors to my exhibition, I could just look downstairs at the grasshopper and the pair of hard working dung beetles.



They had totally changed the otherwise drab foyer space into a mysterious one. Children who came to the gallery were particularly fascinated with these "specimens".

 Apart from the insects, there were a few compositions with human figures, which were also sculpted in acrobatic, agile compositions, ready to jump and spring!


All of them added to the fascinating experience I had at the Lalit Kala.

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!

An artist's room

The 55th National Exhibition of Art was on at the Lalit Kala Akademi, showcasing award winning entries in visual arts for the year. There were a few films being screened too on works of eminent artists. I was able to see one: a documentary film called "Ram Kumar: Nostalgic Longing" produced by the Akademi, and directed by Laurent Bregeat, which was rather nice, showing the artist at work, and capturing his conversation as he worked.

Sharing an image of a sculpture from the exhibition:

"The Artist's Room in Arles" was painted by Vincent Van Gogh in 1889. It has obviously inspired many artists to show their rooms, because here is one from the exhibition: