By PragyanSharma Polavarapu
(1)
I saw recently a big wall mounted canvas painting ( roughly 1.5 meters x 1 meter ) which adorns the drawing room in our relative’s house. It was nice abstract art . I do not exactly remember whether it was in a mix of red and pink colours or entirely red. I had been seeing it for three or four years . Previously every time I saw it I would stand before it only for a few minutes ,appreciate it and then move away. It was attractive but till now I could not understand the hidden meaning.Modern art both attracts and confuses.
(2)
During a recent visit while closely examining the canvas I was attracted by the little splashes of green, blue and white hiding in it. I also detected some faint pictures in faint red lines under the all pervading red and pink. I sat before the canvas for some time sipping hot tea . Unable to understand I took a photo of the picture into my cell phone and took home. I transferred the image to my desktop and enlarged it 5,6 times and examined every section after enlarging to full screen. I examined the painting inch by inch dragging different enlarged sections into view.
The vague lines showed the picture of a little girl sitting with legs folded . The picture was seen in the left of the central section of the canvas . The girl appeared to be praying to god with folded hands. I saw another faint picture in light red lines . It was a lean standing figure with hands and legs represented by lines . There was a big round face with wide protruding eyes. It resembled a weird martian creature! The martian stood before the girl, we may estimate , roughly ten feet away. There was also a very long faint parabolic line between the girl and the martian. In the silent universe of art ---in one way it can be treated as a magical dazzling laser ray being fired by the girl at the martian. in another way it can represent the sound of a loud hymn sung by her cursing the martian and the hymn resounding in the heavens. Either way it was attempt by the girl to eliminate the martian. It is all my imagination ! The blue splash in the picture may be the artist’s hint of vast blue skies . The green splash may be hint of a vast green grassy meadow on the ground . The white splash perhaps indicated all pervading bright sun light . Or was it the blinding lightning from the weapon of Lord Indra thrown on to the martian as per the girl’s prayers? This is all my imagination.
(3)
Modern art allows the viewer to think as he likes about the ideas hidden in a picture . Artists nowadays use media like gels which harden in bright color in a surface with rough texture of little ups and downs .Recently about an year back I saw a real art studio. It was the first time for me to see such studio of a professional artist . I was thrilled to see many finished paintings, some works-in-process , beautiful sculptures etc. I also saw drawing boards, brushes and other equipment .Artists use many mediums to create colour for different situations. Some use acrylic paints made of color powder in water based emulsions , some use coloured gels insoluble in water and quickly harden. The gels are mixed with metal powders , black coal powder, coloured chalk powder etc to crete different types of finish ,some in bright shining hues and some in subdued colours. Some use wood panels and metal plates for creating their work in stead of canvas or paper. I saw art works which showed layered appearance using gel pressed to produce “million” dots, plus signs etc. The artist surely must spend hours to create such designs .
(4)
I was always a lover of water colour paintings, western abstract art, paintings of rural scenes, urban street scenes, “still life” paintings etc.In big English periodicals which I glanced through in the library near our office I saw several attractive coloured photo plates of such paintings in art albums and felt delighted. I got introduced to modern art only through the art books in the library. Later I saw one or two art exhibitions and art galleries.i may say I greatly liked work of Raja Ravi Varma, Tanjavur school and Bengal school of art.
Decades back students enjoyed drawing pictures in little drawing books and painting them in “water colors” . In book shops were available water colour boxes with little half inch size color cakes and painting brushes , boxes of “tube colours” with colour pastes in little tubes and special thick drawing paper sheets . I do not know the present position. Surface of the thick sheets had to be washed with water using a soft brush . Then only after a little drying the paper takes the paint and retains it without spreading the colour in little streams this way and that.
I remember painting in school and college days and even in later times sitting with my daughters and discussing with them about painting nature scenes ,Godavari river scenes etc. I remember making a picture of our most beautiful most majestic British age high school building located in acres of ground bounded by an endless wall like the great wall of China . In the near distance were green hill ranges and far away were blue hill ranges of high eastern ghats with deep evergreen forests where tigers roamed. I also made a painting of the picturesque small isolated “Mahanandiswaram” temple hillock. It had wide Godavari river flowing on one side within a few meters of the hill and an ocean of kilometres wide sand on the other three sides .We would walk in the sand for an hour or more to reach the temple hill. It was a small hillock at the end of a small forested hill range and is very near to the present Polavaram dam.
( 5 )
Decades back when I was in government job, I enjoyed glancing through books on art (mainly paintings) in the big Government Library near our office. The big Central Library was like a silent university with long book cabinets lining the walls . A few score readers always sat absorbed in the bulky books, encyclopaedias etc. There in the library I too spent an hour in evenings after leaving office glancing through magazines like the Reader’s Digest, Time American etc or some classical English novel .I took membership and took books home for years. There I saw books on famous painters with colour plates showing their famous work. I saw colour plates of the paintings by Picasso, Salvador Dali, Amritha Sher -Gill (Haldi Grinders), Raja Ravi Verma (Viswamitra-Menaka),Damerla Rama Rao, SL Haldankar ( “Woman With Lamp”) etc---in the periodical journals or in books about those artists. There were also paintings by the great Rabindranath Tagore. There were photo plates of art works in Tibetan style, Ajantha style , Tamilnad Temple Art style etc.
While seeing such priceless art books , I happened to see some immortal paintings of rural nature done by the famous English painter John Constable(1776-1837) . Later my daughter who appreciates my interest in nature sceneries got the selected landscape painting enlarged ,printed on hard fibre board of (1.5 meters x 1meter) size by computer process . The securely framed painting hangs in our front room --- a most beautiful painting of cattle grazing in a green meadow near a big pond with many trees on the ground and big clouds in the blue sky.
(6)
Dr Rabindranath Tagore described the scenes of morning sun light in a beautiful way. There are nice grassy meadows ,flowering bushes, bird song , morning fog etc. The sun’s beautiful yellow light colours everything golden . Rabindranath Tagore described it as “Festival of morning light” . A modern multicoloured abstract painting is also a “Festival of colour”.
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