The sky displays its many different moods in varied shades of blue, white and stormy grey on each framed canvas that adorns the walls of the Durbar Hall art gallery. These are windows into another world, equal parts achingly beautiful and painfully unforgiving, and the one theme that is near constant in all these vast landscapes is the small groups of people trudging across its painted depths, on a journey of spiritual self discovery.
These are visuals from ‘Kailash Yathra’, a series of 36 watercolour paintings by artist Satheesh Vellinezhi, depicting the many scenes travellers can hope to see on their way to the slopes of the fabled Mount Kailash.
The mountains are a constant presence, looming high in the background, snow-capped peaks stretching up to a sombre sky. And these very mountains take on shades of their own, the snow on their lofty peaks bright white in some images and streaked with the reddish glow of the setting sun in others.
Satheesh, who cites a college tour to the Himalayan region as one of the sparks that ignited his fascination with the mountains, says that the region offers plenty of scope for artistic expression. “If you take Kerala, while there is plenty of natural beauty, it is mostly greenery and the scope is limited, but the snow in the Himalayas adds a new dimension to the shades that can be used,” he says.
Kailash Yathra displays many facets of the holy pilgrimage, particularly the changes in landscape between India and Tibet on the trek through the mountains.
The landscape changes from lush valleys and green shrubbery to stony paths and fast flowing streams between the scenic villages of Kalpa in Kinnaur district of Himachal Pradesh and the popular Leh-Manali highway. The pilgrims travelling across Satheesh’s paintings occasionally take a break to look up at the mountains, starkly defined in some images against the sky beyond, adding a sense of depth, and obscured by haze in others.
Large trucks trundle across stony roads, pack animals are herded across perilous looking bridges suspended high in the air and small shrines and monasteries dot the landscape. Popular landmarks like the Manimahesh Kailash peak and Trishul peaks add some significance to the legend of Kailash and its inhabitant Lord Shiva.
The cool colours and frosty mountains are a welcome juxtaposition in the muggy mid-day heat of Kochi, and Satheesh states that there was no particular visual style that he intended while creating his works.
“I analysed some of Nicholas Roerich’s works on similar themes but the main idea is to show people something they may not have seen before. The journey to Kailash is not like any other trip, it is something spiritual and meaningful, that refreshes people,” he explains.
The subject of the exhibition is not ignored either, with Kailash itself looming under a sky as dark and foreboding as one of the famed tempers of Shiva.
Different scenes mark the progress of sunlight across its peak, while other viewpoints capture it from a distance and also show pilgrims completing the Kailash Kora (a circuit around the mountain).
Kailash Yathra is a tribute to the visual beauty and isolation of the Himalayas and the gruelling yet satisfying trip along its contours to reach the holy site that is Mount Kailash.
A daunting prospect indeed, but images of the surreal sights that await travellers along the way may be just the incentive prospective pilgrims need.
The exhibition is on at the Durbar Hall art gallery till October 19.
