Maya Burman’s paintings are just like her: vivacious, cheerful and radiant. The Paris-based artist creates an intricate, dreamlike world on the canvas where her subjects are always celebrating life. Every activity that we dismiss as mundane inhabits her world because her preoccupation lies in finding the tiniest source of surprise to keep the spirit of life kicking. Drawing from this sense of revelry is her upcoming solo show aptly titled, Joie De Vivre: Celebrating Life, which is presented by Gallerie Ganesha.
When we meet on a recent evening at Machan, Taj Mahal Hotel’s iconic restaurant, I first notice her porcelain skin and graceful disposition. It is impossible to believe that she is a mother of two – a 22-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl. We settle down at a table in the fine dining restaurant, which incidentally is celebrating its 40 years of legacy.
It is strange how living most of her life in Paris, the 46-year-old has carved a niche for herself in the competitive Indian art segment. With over two decades of practice behind her, this daughter of prominent artists Sakti Burman and Maite Delteil, has successfully developed her own language, without succumbing to any peer pressure. “I think being away from India helped quite a lot. I was always away from media gaze. Maybe, I would have been required to behave in a certain way if I were here. There definitely would have been expectations and comparisons, but I am glad that I didn’t have to face that.”
She was a difficult daughter, she admits quite candidly. Looking at her unassuming demeanour, it is almost difficult to believe this confession. Her childlike innocence makes it doubly hard to be convinced by this fact. “My parents really had a tough time bringing me up. Today, when I tell my mother how difficult my children are, she quickly reminds me that she had to deal with someone who was even worse.”
“You know how we all are during our teenage. We are rebels and believe in opposition. I too was like that. I didn’t have any dream in life. I just wanted to be a punk. Frankly, I wanted to be anything but not a painter. This kind of idea took shape in my mind probably because my life was way different from my friends,” she says.
Her friends had regular houses and living rooms but in her house, there were only studios. “My parents would never go out for work, they were always at home. They never had a regular income like my friends’ parents, so I had told myself that I wouldn’t be like them.”
Our intense conversation is briefly interrupted by our server who introduces us to their special menu, ‘Back to Classics’ which includes the dishes that have been most popular among their patrons. Maya wants to skip starters and soups and orders asparagus and basil risotto. “I have been eating home-cooked Indian food ever since I landed in India two weeks ago. So, this is a welcome change,” she points out. “I am very happy when I don’t have to cook. Because when I am in Paris I have to cook meals twice a day for my family. My husband and daughter come home for lunch every day and dinner too we have together. See, I am just a housewife and a painter. Isn’t it a simple life?”
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It indeed is, especially, when she casually shares that she doesn’t have a cellphone. I look at her astonished. “I don’t need it really. I am in the house most of the times. Also, there are many things to learn and things to discover. This is why I enjoy reading,” she adds.
The places she visits and the books she reads become a fodder for her creative imagination. She starts building an imaginative world where she creates her own subjects and stitches their narratives together. As the food arrives, she enjoys the remarkable plating of food. Coming back to our conversation, she says it was her rebellion that she made her opt for a degree in architecture. “I chose this because I was interested in creating something. At the back of my mind, I had decided that I would be an architect to earn my bread and butter and would do painting to keep my soul in peace.”
But things took a different turn when she came to India. She got married at the age of 22 and was a mother by 24. Divorce happened around the same time and she was back in Paris with her child. This was the time her parents gave her an option, to finish her degree in architecture – which she never did or pursue painting. “I had to make a choice. My parents were there to guide me and I took a leap of faith. I first started drawing illustrations and gradually moved to sketches. Education in architecture had already given me the basics but the foundation was formed in my formative years.”
Finding her expression
Since during childhood she was always surrounded by her parents whom she had closely observed. “There was never proper training but they ensured that they gave feedback to whatever I created. So, when I started painting the only thing that I struggled with was an idea. How to express myself. How would my thoughts translate onto the canvas,” she tells me while savouring her risotto.
Maya doesn’t want to wear the garb of pretence or intellectualism. She is not in the art world to make any statement. She is here to create a world she believes in. “Many people tell me that why I don’t create something that is a commentary on our social environment. But I think that every artist has his own insignia or handwriting. Many Jewish painters depict the atrocities of life because they have survived the Holocaust. They are drawing from their life experience. But I wonder how I could paint something that I haven’t experienced. You really can’t fake it for too long just to grab headlines and be popular. What is fashionable today becomes unfashionable tomorrow.”
Her works are often been described as a marriage between French art nouveau tradition and Indian miniature art, but Maya says that her love for painstakingly intricate details comes from the observations she has had while visiting Indian’s cultural and historical monuments and also from European art. “It is difficult to specify their origin, but they represent the world I see and cherish.”
Looking at the monumental artworks, depicting animals in a wild jungle, that hang elegantly on the walls of the restaurant, she tells me while digging carefully into her Parsi dairy kulfi, “In case of my paintings you can never see any resemblance with Indian iconography because I visited India first when I was 10 and after that in my early 20s. My subjects are more universal, more imaginary.” “Now I come to India twice a year, but the language that I have developed is completely mine,” she sums up.
(Joie De Vivre: Celebrating Life opens on November 3 at Triveni Kala Sangam, New Delhi)
