It was evening in the hills, just after twilight. The balmy sunlight was fading fast and the realities of life seemed less harsh, everything somehow softening in the dark. I muddled my way up the old stone-paved path, passing two figures walking downhill murmuring in hushed tones — a couple, barely discernible, the man smoking a beedi. The path was like a tunnel hollowed out through bushes and trees. From newly installed lamps at cottage entrances, pools of bluish white light spilled across gates. I heard a child’s cry from a caretaker’s quarters and it kicked my senses alive, making me visualise a warm hearth in a home. Sounds of cooking mingled with the smell of cow dung, damp earth after rain, pine trees and smoke. As I walked up higher, suddenly, through a clearing, the top of Potato Hill appeared with swirls of mists on its rounded head. The last ethereal glow drifted through. Elsewhere across the valley, a dog barked. Unknown creatures came out scuffling, and beetles made loud clicking sounds like the tic-tac toy we played with as kids. There was something seductive about walking in the dark, not seeing everything, just feeling my way through. All the familiar scenes of the day were gone, the rocky hillside with orange kiss-me-nots in their crevices, the very same landscape of day entirely altered by night.
A change of medium does just that — it alters experience. On my walk, I imagined incandescent spirits in the clouds, recalling the wreath-like sprites in Asma Menon’s recent watercolours. At Gallery Sri Parvati, these works are formally different from Asma’s acrylic and print, yet, her characteristic imagination expounds, going beyond the material world with her penchant for wanderlust. Most watercolour paintings are small format, as it is a difficult medium and requires fine control. You cannot paint over as with acrylics or oils. Several artists at this show were using watercolours after a long time. “We were, in a way, out of our regular realm of medium of work and it brought about a different sensitivity,” says Asma. In Meadow, birds sit on wires, silhouetted in the late evening light, and fairies with fragile wings hover over the green. Altered states are suggestive in Asma’s titles as well — Place no more. So also in Twilight, a field and fence extends to other visitations of the artist’s fantasy against a crimson sky, echoing the paranormal.
Some years ago, on a trip to Ooty, K. Muralidharan was inspired by the picturesque scenery. Over endless cups of tea at a friend’s place, where he was staying, Murali painted without pressure. Both medium and place induced their magic. “It is rare for Murali to paint landscapes,” says gallery owner Lakshmi Venkatraman. Fresh and lively hillside homes with roofs and trees emerged in natural settings, a departure from Murali’s established language that infuses iconic figures, animals, mythologies and symbols as abstract figurative art.
The possibilities of the unknown have excited human imagination and watercolours allow for a literal transparency of thought in the fluid still-life works of Suresh Kumar. A see-through clock, a crushed table cloth, fruit and flowers could be the subject of any still life, but Suresh brings a gorgeous lucidity to the notion of how we see and what we see: he shows us how images are really the reflections of our own thoughts and experiences.
Uncertainty of death and life surround C. Douglas’ alchemic portrayals in Blue Fish. Three words “fish, water and blue” were his starting point. Being submerged in water is a mysterious state and Douglas explores the destiny of a large fish. A hook hangs close to the fish’s mouth in one painting and a net is suspended over the fish in the next. “Maybe he is caught, maybe not,” says Douglas. “He could be negotiating or meditating.” Douglas quotes from Arthur Rimbaud’s The Drunken Boat — If I want a water of Europe, it is the black/ Cold puddle where in the sweet-smelling twilight/A squatting child full of sadness releases/ A boat as fragile as a May butterfly. The ephemeral nature of life breathes through in watercolour.
