A picture can tell a story just as well as descriptive prose. And this proves right for Nibedita Sen’s paintings that were recently on view in the Capital. The show “Gitanjali and Sea Inside: Parallel Journeys” was held at the India International Centre.
The colour blue has always been central to her paintings, which symbolises hope for her. “Painting always ran parallel to my mainstream academics and I don’t know why, even as a child I was mostly fascinated by the colour blue, its innumerable shades and tones,” says Nibedita, a self-taught artist.
“Gitanjali and Sea Inside: Parallel Journeys” is a collection of her memories from the voyages undertaken over a decade on the high seas with her master-mariner husband. Having sailed extensively and spent long periods on oceans and seas, she has tried to explore life’s mysteries in her paintings.Nibedita who also writes — “Poetry happened to me when there was nothing but a sense of loss permeating my life” — has taken inspiration from Rabindranath Tagore’s “Gitanjali”. She tries to draw a parallel between the emotions expressed in Gurudev’s poems and her art, with each painting including her verses too. She has chosen 59 poems from “Gitanjali” and the same number of her paintings and poems to portray how her journey echoes an experience of darkness and light similar to Tagore’s in “Gitanjali”.
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Nibedita’s works were showcased at The Nehru Centre, London, by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations in 2013.
The Kolkata born artist is a post-graduate in English and has done a stint as a freelance journalist. She has also worked as a creative art therapist and with visually challenged children.