Ruby Jagrut doesn’t just paint. She makes her own colours as well. And all from whatever she can lay her hands on. It could be soil from Bhutan, volcano ash from Bhuj, ayurvedic medicine, pomegranate seeds and so on. Ahmedabad-based Ruby Jagrut belongs to the rare tribe of artists who paint with natural dyes. The painter showcased her unique artistic practice in her eighth solo ‘Pratidhvani — An Echo Of Virtue On Canvas’ which concluded this week in the Capital at the India Habitat Centre.
The show has around 13 paintings which depict some of prominent female characters of Mahabharata — Ganga, Amba, Kunti, Gandhari, Hidimba, Draupadi, Madhavi, Savitri, Uttara and Shakuntala. Gifted a Bhagavad Gita by someone, she found the sacred text so engaging that she felt compelled to paint. “It took me months to painstakingly study and research the Mahabharata to bring out a visual expression of each of the female characters in the epic. What I realised is that as an epic and a philosophical cornerstone of Indian culture, the Mahabharat is brilliantly open to interpretation and importantly the female characters are intense and vital to the narrative,” says Ruby, who first had this show in her native town in March.
The subject matter of mythology, which she has worked on for the first time, gels well with the chosen medium of natural dyes. Not formally trained, she was initiated to the world of natural dyes 70’s and 80’s through workshops by experts such as K.V. Chandramouli, Toofan Rafai and Mohammad Jamil. “All these old schools of painting — Kangra school of painting, Rajasthani miniatures – used natural dyes but now there are just very few people in India who use them especially in contemporary context. It is such a magical medium. As I started researching and later experimenting with it, I got more and more involved,” says the artist, who has been working with natural dyes for 20 years now.
While researching the world of natural dyes, Ruby got to know of the place colours occupied in history. “Some Kauravas were named after colours. Since Dhrishtadyumna, Draupadi’s brother, emerged out of a yagna, he had wheatish complexion and in our Gujarati, if you break this word, it would somewhat mean this colour. Pandu means pale yellow. If you read Vishnudharmottara, you will find such details about painting and colours. And the more I read all this, more I got convinced to work with natural dyes,” says the artist. Her increasing knowledge widened her palette. “Also my travels and the curiosity to develop it further added to it. Like when I went to Bhutan, I got two kilograms of soil. I get this volcano ash from Bhuj which gives a brilliant black. In my Gandhari work, I have derived red from stone, pomegranate seeds and some ayurvedic medicine.”
Ruby has not only contemporised this old painting technique but also the ancient text. “Because I live in these times and in any case it’s a timeless tale. Kunti, I felt, was constantly at war with herself all her life. Don’t a lot of us feel like that? Most of the women except Hidimba, have no facial expressions. Savitri doesn’t have hands because whatever she did, she did from her mind. She didn’t need hands. I ended up empathising with women characters more in the Mahabharata.”
The artist is in talks with people for taking the show to Baroda and Pune.
