In the late 1770s, a British colonial official named Sir Elijah Impey and his wife, Lady Mary, commissioned the Indian artist Shaikh Zain ud-Din to catalog a private menagerie, including various bird species, the couple had assembled at their home in Calcutta. Using paper and watercolors from England, Zain ud-Din, a Muslim from the city of Patna, modeled his work after English botanical illustration, but he also brought to the job his training in the ornate Mughal artistic tradition—and his own distinctive style. Today critics praise the quality of the colors and the composition, in which a bright, simple background offsets the keenly wrought details of plants and animals. “Everything is incredibly precise and beautifully observant,” says Xavier Bray, director of London’s Wallace Collection, which this month mounts the first UK exhibition of works by Indian artists commissioned by officers of the British East India Company.
The expat aristocrats who patronized Zain ud-Din and his fellow artists had been sent abroad to help manage their country’s growing empire, but once there many, like the Impeys, fell in love with the subcontinent, as well as its flora and fauna. “These paintings,” Bray says, “were made into albums to be leafed through back home, on a rainy day, drinking Earl Grey tea.”
History failed to record much about Zain ud-Din’s life beyond his watercolors for the Impeys. But the new show, which includes 99 paintings of nature studies, portraits and landscapes by 18 artists, makes an argument that he and his contemporaries should be recognized on their own merits, as some of India’s greatest painters. “Anything with a colonial air about it is now considered politically incorrect,” Bray says. “But what we’re trying to do is bring back these extraordinary artists who have been almost completely forgotten.”
Gulammohammed Sheikh: ‘What we need is an open climate within our institutions to allow artists to practise their art’
Gulammohammed Sheikh, artist (Illustration : Suvajit Dey)
Gulammohammed Sheikh speaks on the idea of multiplicity in life, art education in India, interference in institutions and how the world of art remains free of divides. This session was moderated by Vandana Kalra, Senior Assistant Editor, The Indian Express .
Vandana Kalra: In 1981, you had said that living in India means living simultaneously in several times and cultures. Do you think the relevance of your statement has only increased over time? Also, how do you look at the works that you made during that period, for example, City for Sale?
Among these works, the first one was About Waiting and Wandering, the other was Speaking Street, the third Revolving Routes and the fourth City for Sale. They relate to actual situations and are connected.
Speaking Street was a re-creation of the kind of street that I lived in during my childhood. Born in 1937, I spent about 18 years in Surendranagar, which was then a small town, before I came to Baroda to study. We lived in a little lane, which had a little mosque whose walls were painted green with enamel colours, but it didn’t have a dome. There would be people sitting on the street selling fish, or somebody pulling a little cart. In the lower half of the painting there are several events taking place simultaneously in different houses or rooms, as would happen with people living in chawls. Speaking Street also carries a personal portrait — a young boy looking out of a window. Thinking of the childhood spent in a street like that, I remember having learnt to recite the Quran in Arabic at a madarsa, while studying Sanskrit at school. It gave me the idea of multiplicity in life, connected by multiple belief systems.
This work connects with the much larger City for Sale, based in the city in which I continue to live; the city of Baroda, now Vadodara. I came to Baroda first in 1955 as a student, and after finishing my studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts, I taught there for three years. I was then in London on a scholarship for three years and returned home in 1966. When I first came to Baroda, it opened for me not just the world of art, but also the art of the world. But in 1969 this city produced another image. Some of the worst communal riots took place here between 1969 and 1970. People began to look at me with my name in mind. So, it gave me an identity which was different from the identity that I had acquired when I had reached Baroda, then — open, liberal, multifaceted. In 1969, suddenly the situation changed. These four paintings, in some ways, reflect upon the times that I had gone through. City for Sale is large and has multiple figures, so many characters. There are three men meeting on the pretext of lighting a matchstick. Would that provoke incendiary connotations? There is also a woman who has a big vegetable cart, which literally flows into the town. Then there is, in the centre, a film being shown called Silsila (1981). And on the top, the scene of a communal riot. It brought together multiple parts of a city, depicting how riots are raging in one part, but a film is being shown in another. In a way, it was confessional, it was also some kind of a release for me.
Yes, there are problems that beset our institutions. Government museums and academies are out of touch with what’s going on in the world of art, and directors are often appointed rather arbitrarily, often not from the art world at all
Vandana Kalra: In more recent years, you’ve taken this thought forward and you seem to have turned to Kabir and Mahatma Gandhi to call for peace, call for intermingling. If you could talk a bit about that.
Gandhi came to me right from the time I was in school. I read My Experiments with Truth (1927), in Gujarati it’s Satya Na Prayogo. It has remained with me ever since. During the years of 1969 and 1970, Gandhi kept coming to me, in different forms, different guises. But I didn’t know how to paint Gandhiji, I had never seen him in person. I saw lots of photographs. Then I devised something. The first painting that I made of him was of Gandhi in South Africa, in the image of a young lawyer. But the second one, which I have used twice or thrice since, was the image of Gandhi returning to India, quoted from a painting by Abanindranath Tagore.
Kabir came in a different way. I was familiar with his poetry from my school days but he began to become more and more relevant in the context of the conflicting situations that I saw around myself. I thought, perhaps, I should try to paint Kabir. But how to paint Kabir? My mentor KG Subramanyan’s mentor Benodebehari Mukherjee had painted a large mural in Santiniketan on the saint-poets of India, which included Kabir. Benode babu knew that Kabir was a weaver, so he went to the weavers’ colony to search for his image of a weaver and made his Kabir. I found a Kabir image in a late Mughal painting in the British Museum collection and devised a Kabir-like persona from that image. As Kabir began to recur in my mind, I began to read Kabir but it was difficult to find a visual equivalent. It was when I heard Kumar Gandharva singing Kabir that I thought, why can I not illustrate his poetry? Within histories of art, a great number of paintings illustrate poetry.
We have to think of a holistic way of devising a new art education system for our country. An art education system that is not standardised. It should leave room for each region, each culture in a diverse country like ours
Vandana Kalra: How do you look at the dialogue between your poetry and painting?
When I started writing poetry while I was in school, it was very traditional, using Sanskrit meters or in the form of songs. When I came to Baroda, I met a new mentor, Suresh Joshi, the writer who pioneered a modern idiom in Gujarati. He introduced us to Baudelaire, Rilke, Lorca, etc. After reading these great poets, I felt what I was writing was not worthwhile, so I threw away much of it, and began to write poetry without verse, without any meter. I felt I should use spoken language. I had to find my voice from within the spoken word. In some ways, I had to find something which was not only modern but also personal, which was mine. Similarly, in painting, I had to struggle hard. Every student feels that he is under the shadow of his teacher, so he wants to get out of that shadow. I started to look outside of Baroda. I looked at MF Husain and began using the image of a horse. But there was a difference between Husain’s horses and mine. Husain’s horses are to be regarded as timeless. Charged with energy, they were larger than life. My lonely creature came from my life experiences, perhaps it came from the tonga, the ghoda-gaadi that I knew from my childhood. This horse was harnessed and was trying to unshackle itself.
” The world of art in India is still free of divides… For us it was a mini India, a multiple India; it was not straitjacketed into the singular. Many of us found our life partners from within the Faculty we taught and studied at
Devyani Onial: What do you think about art education in India? Also, you started teaching when you were very young. Can you talk a bit about those days?
Art education should begin at school and children should be taken to art galleries and museums. I’ve seen not just in the West, but also in places like Indonesia, tiny tots are taken to museums, they have their little notebooks with them in which they write about the paintings that they see.
The Faculty of Fine Arts (MS University), set up around 1950, was the first institution in India where university education included fine arts. It offered not a diploma, but a degree.
What the pioneers visualised was an artist who was literate and educated, a new citizen of modern India, because it coincided with the independence of the country. It was a small institution, the teacher student ratio was one to 10, or one to 15. The studios were huge, they were like warehouses and were open throughout the day and night. For somebody like me, coming from a small town, it was a great experience to learn from your teachers who were working alongside you. We saw NS Bendre working, we saw our seniors like Jyoti Bhatt, Shanti Dave and GR Santosh working. Despite the fact that I had some financial difficulties, I managed to sail through those four years of under-graduation, and then even did my master’s. I got a job to teach while I was in my second-year master’s course and some of my classmates also became my students for a brief while. But art education, even to this day, is a neglected discipline. We have to think of a holistic way of devising a new art education system for our country. An art education system that is not standardised. It should leave room for each region, each culture in a diverse and multifarious country like ours.
Leena Misra: Vadodara was recently in the news because Chandra Mohan was not allowed to display his artwork. It was also in the news because they have booked the first case of interfaith marriage, which violates the freedom of religion. So what do you think went wrong in the city and why are people not speaking up? Has the space for expression, even for artists, shrunk?
It’s not that people were not speaking. Prof Shivaji Panikkar, the then in-charge Dean of the Faculty, stood firm defending the student against a controversy engineered by external elements. A spate of protests by students against the assault on the institution continued for almost a year. Several of us spoke. Ganesh Devy (literary critic) had also spoken up. But the issue that you’re talking about is larger. What we need is an open climate within our institutions of art and art education, to allow artists to practise their art. External issues have been brought to institutions, which then have been victims of unhealthy controversies and conflicts. I think artists should and would articulate their ideas through their art and there are artists who have done that. I will quote the German playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht: “Will there be singing in the dark times?” To which the answer is, “Yes, there will be singing about the dark times”.
External interferences are mostly politically motivated, we got to stand against them but while continuing to practise. If you stop practising, if you do not paint, that is more dangerous. Baroda had a liberal foundation and to an extent it still exists. The world of art and artists in India is still free of divides. Let me give you example of five of my teachers from the Faculty of Fine Arts. The first dean Markand Bhatt, a Gujarati, was married to Perin, a Parsi. NS Bendre, a Maharashtrian, married Mona, a Tamilian. Sankho Chaudhuri, a Bengali, married a Parsi fellow artist Ira, and K G Subramanyan married Sushila, a Punjabi, the last two couples had met in Santiniketan. For us it was a mini India, a multiple India; it was not straitjacketed into the singular. Many of us found our life partners from within the Faculty we taught and studied at. A Kashmiri Ratan Parimoo found Naina, a Gujarati; a Maharashtrian PD Dhumal, married Rini, who was a Bengali. So there was nothing unusual in a Gujarati like me marrying a Punjabi Nilima. That has been the culture of the Faculty of Fine Arts. We lived a life which was not just a life lived, but a life shared.
Shiny Varghese: What do you think are the values that we should support today that will determine what our future will be like tomorrow?
I would answer your question in a different way. Frankly, my own view is that contemporary Indian art is still very vibrant. We have three to four generations of artists working. We have 97-year-old Krishen Khanna, of the generation of Husain. You have my generation, and you have those that come after us, like Atul Dodiya, Sudarshan Shetty and several others. Then there is a still younger generation working. I’m not painting a rosy picture. What I am trying to say is that within art, among artists, there is still a dialogue, and they are working steadfastly. I’m also very happy that we have many women artists. We also have several couple-artists, doing different things in their own way. Like Manu and Madhvi Parekh, Arpita and Paramjit Singh, Reena and Jitish Kallat, Atul and Anju Dodiya, Bharti Kher and Subodh Gupta among others. I wonder if such a situation prevails in other countries. I am putting it in a somewhat simplistic manner but the values our artists seem to pursue are the values of a free and creative practice. Most of us are engaged in finding a visual language for contemporary issues, often referring to problematics of our times. Then, there are so many young artists. We have a young artist called BR Shailesh, who was trained in a gurukul, he speaks Sanskrit, he came to study painting, and he ventured into digital art, then into installation. He is using his gurukul background and devising a way where there is both critique as well as celebration.
Rinku Ghosh: On the one hand you say art is about hope, on the other you choose to stay away from rescuing institutions like the National Gallery of Modern Art and Lalit Kala Akademi from decay. How will young artists express themselves freely if greats like you don’t act?
It is not correct. Artists have always spoken out in one way or another. A long time back, in the 1960s, J Swaminathan published Contra (1966-67) to take on the Akademis, we (Bhupen Khakhar and I) brought out a journal called Vrishchik (1969-73) and through that, amongst other things, mounted a campaign to reform the Lalit Kala Akademi. We fought for three years, as a result of which the government appointed the Khosla Commission. Some of the reforms that we were fighting for were included. So, it’s not that artists have not driven change. Yes, there are problems that beset our institutions. Government museums and academies are out of touch with what’s going on in the wider world of art, and directors are often appointed rather arbitrarily, often not from the art world at all. Are we to become activists then? When KG Subramanyan was asked the question, he said tellingly that yes, he would, but as an artist activist, not as an activist artist. The younger generations of artists too have their own modes of articulating the need for change, their own activism.
Paromita Chakrabarti: Could you speak about the time when you met your wife? You mentioned how it was commonplace in the artistic community to find partners from other communities. In the larger city, for instance, was there the ghost of love jihad at that time, which has become so prominent now?
I have already made some remarks about the issues earlier. I have tried to answer these through the paintings that I have done, including City for Sale, which is about the city and which deals with the kind of conflicting situation you are talking about.
External interferences are mostly politically motivated, we got to stand against them but while continuing to practise. If you stop practising, if you do not paint, that is more dangerous. Baroda had a liberal foundation and to an extent it still exists. The world of art and artists in India is still free of divides. Let me give you example of five of my teachers from the Faculty of Fine Arts. The first dean Markand Bhatt, a Gujarati, was married to Perin, a Parsi. NS Bendre, a Maharashtrian, married Mona, a Tamilian. Sankho Chaudhuri, a Bengali, married a Parsi fellow artist Ira, and K G Subramanyan married Sushila, a Punjabi, the last two couples had met in Santiniketan. For us it was a mini India, a multiple India; it was not straitjacketed into the singular. Many of us found our life partners from within the Faculty we taught and studied at. A Kashmiri Ratan Parimoo found Naina, a Gujarati; a Maharashtrian PD Dhumal, married Rini, who was a Bengali. So there was nothing unusual in a Gujarati like me marrying a Punjabi Nilima. That has been the culture of the Faculty of Fine Arts. We lived a life which was not just a life lived, but a life shared.
Shiny Varghese: What do you think are the values that we should support today that will determine what our future will be like tomorrow?
I would answer your question in a different way. Frankly, my own view is that contemporary Indian art is still very vibrant. We have three to four generations of artists working. We have 97-year-old Krishen Khanna, of the generation of Husain. You have my generation, and you have those that come after us, like Atul Dodiya, Sudarshan Shetty and several others. Then there is a still younger generation working. I’m not painting a rosy picture. What I am trying to say is that within art, among artists, there is still a dialogue, and they are working steadfastly. I’m also very happy that we have many women artists. We also have several couple-artists, doing different things in their own way. Like Manu and Madhvi Parekh, Arpita and Paramjit Singh, Reena and Jitish Kallat, Atul and Anju Dodiya, Bharti Kher and Subodh Gupta among others. I wonder if such a situation prevails in other countries. I am putting it in a somewhat simplistic manner but the values our artists seem to pursue are the values of a free and creative practice. Most of us are engaged in finding a visual language for contemporary issues, often referring to problematics of our times. Then, there are so many young artists. We have a young artist called BR Shailesh, who was trained in a gurukul, he speaks Sanskrit, he came to study painting, and he ventured into digital art, then into installation. He is using his gurukul background and devising a way where there is both critique as well as celebration.
Rinku Ghosh: On the one hand you say art is about hope, on the other you choose to stay away from rescuing institutions like the National Gallery of Modern Art and Lalit Kala Akademi from decay. How will young artists express themselves freely if greats like you don’t act?
It is not correct. Artists have always spoken out in one way or another. A long time back, in the 1960s, J Swaminathan published Contra (1966-67) to take on the Akademis, we (Bhupen Khakhar and I) brought out a journal called Vrishchik (1969-73) and through that, amongst other things, mounted a campaign to reform the Lalit Kala Akademi. We fought for three years, as a result of which the government appointed the Khosla Commission. Some of the reforms that we were fighting for were included. So, it’s not that artists have not driven change. Yes, there are problems that beset our institutions. Government museums and academies are out of touch with what’s going on in the wider world of art, and directors are often appointed rather arbitrarily, often not from the art world at all. Are we to become activists then? When KG Subramanyan was asked the question, he said tellingly that yes, he would, but as an artist activist, not as an activist artist. The younger generations of artists too have their own modes of articulating the need for change, their own activism.
Paromita Chakrabarti: Could you speak about the time when you met your wife? You mentioned how it was commonplace in the artistic community to find partners from other communities. In the larger city, for instance, was there the ghost of love jihad at that time, which has become so prominent now?
I have already made some remarks about the issues earlier. I have tried to answer these through the paintings that I have done, including City for Sale, which is about the city and which deals with the kind of conflicting situation you are talking about.
It is difficult to tell you the personal story, but it was, and is not uncommon among artists to get acquainted with each other, and eventually to become not only friends but partners. The pursuit of our vocation brought us together. Several of my friends and students have married outside their communities. The kind of divide, that you belong to this belief system or you belong to that belief system, or that you come from Kerala or Bihar, is denounced in our community of artists. Art actually binds, art brings us together, art gives us a new world to live in. When I say that art spells hope, what I mean is that hope is the essence of the creative act. I still believe that a creative life also makes you a slightly better human being, because it allows you to keep the divide out, it allows you to share, it allows you to meet people, it allows you to connect with as many people as possible.
Suanshu Khurana: You mentioned Kumar Gandharva and the impact his Kabir bhajans had on your work. Are there any other musicians who’ve been a significant part of your consciousness while creating your art?
I listen to a lot of music. Even now, during the pandemic, we have a little bluetooth speaker and I listen to music every morning or while working. I listen to Mallikarjun Mansur, I love Bhimsen Joshi, I enjoy Kishori Amonkar’s singing. I have not known many musicians, but I had some connection with Kumar Gandharva because of the opportunities of meeting during the programmes at Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal during the 1980s, where I would listen to him. Among the series of Kabir paintings I made, two were companion pieces: a largish painting called Ek Achambha Dekha Re Bhai has the companion piece called Heerna. It is my tribute to Heerna sung by Kumar Gandharva.
source: http://www.indianexpress.com / The Indian Express / Home> Idea Exchange / by Premium, Express News Service / April 05th, 2022
Kalaburagi-based artist Mohammed Ayazuddin Patel will participate in a three-day International Art Festival titled Colours of the World organised in collaboration with Amman Greater Municipality and SMD Foundation at Ras Al Ain Art Gallery, Amman in Jordan.
The festival will be inaugurated under the patronage of Anwar Halim, Ambassador of India in Oman, on Saturday.
Artists from the U.S., Jordan, Canada, Taiwan, India and other countries are taking part in the art festival.
Mr. Patel will display his digital painting works based on Indian culture.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> National> Karnataka / by Staff Reporter / Kalaburagi – March 02nd, 2022
Rasheed Artist is one among these people in Malegaon, who despite all odds went on to achieve such a position, which is difficult for many even under most favourable conditions
Rasheed Artist – renowned artist of Malegaon
The powerloom factories in Malegaon might have been the only available option for the Malegaonians, the deprived people of the Muslim dominated textile town in North Maharashtra. Yet the amount earned after working in these factories was sufficient till a few decades ago to make one’s end meet easily. This perhaps is the reason why the town has surprising number of poets, laureates, scholars and artists who would work in these factories like petty labourers during the day and then indulge themselves in creative activities till late in the evening.
Rasheed Artist is one among these people in Malegaon, who despite all odds went on to achieve such a position, which is difficult for many even under most favourable conditions. Hanging against the walls of the main halls inside the plush bungalows owned by the dignitaries in India as well as in various other countries in the world, Rasheed Artist’s paintings are point of attraction for visitors since many years. Fabulous achievement indeed! However the journey that led to these walls was not easy, and for Rasheed Artist, it needed a matchless and unprecedented effort since childhood.
Malegaon in the sixties though had quite a good number of schools, managements could hardly find a good drawing teacher during those difficult days. Under these circumstances having a professional artist to teach the art of painting to students using watercolor was beyond one’s imaginations. However Rasheed Artist was resolute. He was just 15 but when he failed in fulfilling his strong desire for commercial art in the corridors of the education campus, he decided to quit schooling.
“It was my craze for paintings that forced me to drop out of the school in the early age”, he recalled.
Holding brush in one hand and color box in the other, he began roaming here and there to satisfy his lust for Art. It was then that Wad Saheb, a Director at Camel, the stationary giant famous for manufacturing pencils, watercolor and other stationary items till recently, came to Malegaon. Wad Saheb, as Rasheed Artist described the renowned artist from Shimla, visited Malegaon as part of his nation-wide talent-search program.
“He visited Malegaon for consecutive years in the seventies, shared valuable tips with the students like us and organised painting and drawing competitions to encourage us”, Rasheed Artist said adding:
“In his second visit to Malegaon in 1968, I won the competition. Wad Saheb was thrilled watching the improvement I had attained in one year.”
In Wad Saheb, Rashid Artist found a mentor. But he was not a lord and any further continuation from now had become unbearable for his parents. To bear the expenses hence Rasheed Artist began working in a local powerloom factory along with his father – without of course sharing hardly any money with him for regular household needs. Rasheed Artist would work for three to four days in a week and the moment he would get some cash would rush to Mumbai and wander around the city’s art galleries in his humble and simple attire which is part of his persona even now.
“Jahangir and Taj Art Galleries in Mumbai were my favorite hunting grounds”, he recalled.
His encounter with the masters of the time – including the legendaries Jahangir Sabhawala and Sarvayya at these galleries are still the precious moments of his life.
“My comments and discussions would make them dumb. They could not believe a humble looking person like me had such a sound knowledge of canvas paintings.”, he said.
Rasheed Artist
In 1970, Rasheed Artist permanently moved to Mumbai,and started working on banners, sketches and art works for the upcoming films at V. Shantaram’s Mumbai Central Film Department. He was earning reasonably well now. But to earn was never in his priority list. Therefore he decided to leave Mumbai and return back to Malegaon where his talent soon witnessed a surprising turnaround.
“Innovation and creativity have always been my passions. Back in Malegaon, I began working on popular couplets of Urdu poets and tried to portray them in my paintings”, he recalled.
There was no looking back after that. He soon acquired perfection in transferring Urdi couplets over the canvas with amazing interpretational skills. Hundreds of canvas paintings portraying Urdu couplets by the poets like Mirza Ghalib, Firaq Gorakhpuri, Meer Taqi Meer, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Rahat Indori, Shabina Adeeb, Parvin Shakir and others were ready in quick succession. Subsequently, it became customary for the Malegaonians to gift Rasheed Artist’s paintings to the dignitaries who would visit the town.
While the one gifted to veteran musician Naushad painted on the famous couplet Aabadiyon main dasht ka manzar bhi ayega; Guzroge shaher se to mera ghar bhi ayega is still greeting the visitors in his hall, Shabana Azmi has put the one presented to her father Kaifi Azmi portrayed on Aik woh keh jinko fikre nashaib o faraz hai; Aik hum keh chal pade toh behr haal chal pade in her office.
Rashid Artist with his paintings.
Majrooh Sulatnpuri was lucky to get two paintings. Of these two, the one on Sutoone daar pe rakhte chalo saron ke charaag; Jahan talak yeh sitam ki siyah raat chale is in Canada and the other on Phir koi masloob hua sare rahe tamnna; Aawaze jaras pichle pahar taiz bahut hai is part of the splendid collection at Dubai Urdu Library.
Simultaneously, Rasheed Artist also perfectly worked on portraits of the people he loved the most. They included freedom fighters, world leaders, artists and poets. When Dilip Kumar visited Malegaon in 1980, he was thrilled to see his portrait. The portrait presented to him is now greeting the people at his Bandra residence. The portraits of Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini and Mirza Ghalib presented to Ferhad Parizaad of the Iranian Cultural Centre in Mumbai in 1985 are in Iran.
Today Rasheed Artist is the ultimate and globally recognized name when it comes to canvas paintings. In fact, he is perhaps the only artist in the Indian sub continent who portrays Urdu couplets over the canvas with such a sound interpretational skills. Yet Rasheed Artist has few more dreams in his life.
“Apart from writing a book on Sketching and Painting, it’s my dream to transfer the history of Urdu Ghazals from Ameer Khusroo till date over the canvas”, he said in a determined tone.
Rasheed Artist at this stage of his life is finding it easier to run the expenses of his family. However to run his dream project is of course an expensive affair. Moreover, looking at him who resolutely turned down the offers by popular art galleries in London and Australia to auction his paintings, it seems impossible for him to make any compromises merely for the sake of arranging funds needed to work on these projects. Yet one thing is certain. The stubborn in him would not let him sit idle. It would be really interesting to see how he achieves these targets.
[An abridged version of this article was published by The Times of India, on August 25, 2010 in its Nashik edition.]
source: http://www.ummid.com / Ummid.com / Home> India> Life & Style / by Aleem Faizee, ummid.com / June 13th, 2009
Five full minutes is what it takes for me to tear myself away from the allure of this painting I find myself staring at. Decked up in traditional jewellery and dress, it’s a portrait of a girl, looking back as if beckoning you to follow her, and yet there is nothing beyond her. Complete unto itself, the portrait doesn’t need a backdrop for contextualization. Your eyes must not travel elsewhere and the intrigue in her eyes ensures that it does not. The bold strokes defining dropped shoulders, tousled hair, lips that might break into a smile any minute, and eyes gazing intently at some unknown familiarity- Hana Bawa, a Mumbai based artist, paints the stuff of dreams. It’s not just the technical perfection of her paintings but the sheer magic of their intrigue that pulls you in.
Dilip Kumar and Saira Banu : By Hana Bawa
A 27 year old single mother, Bawa is a self- taught painter. Almost like that of a child prodigy, the story of her artistic journey begins with her perfectly complex childhood drawings. She was already drawing animal figures at the age of seven years. Born into a family of largely sportspersons, Bawa stands out for her artistic talent that finds some resonance only with her grandmother’s interest in crafting. Thanks to an unconventional family background, she never had to face the typical Indian parents’ pressures and diktats to pursue only a certain kind of career, and she remembers not to forget it, as she adds “I am immensely thankful to my family for being extremely supportive of my decisions and career choices throughout.” A graduate in sociology, she also pursued a fashion designing course but an intense passion for art propelled her towards the career path she eventually ended up paving for herself. It is her philosophy of “grow(ing) in whatever you choose to do” that makes her exclaim “I’m still learning” even after having sold numerous pieces of her stunning art.
A mother and her baby
Hana Bawa has not just made commissioned artwork, but her paintings have also been exhibited in Minnesota (USA) apart from various art galleries in India, and Afghanistan – no mean feat for an artist who climbed this high sans a formal art training. When asked about her participation in the said exhibition on the theme of ‘Afghan Culture’, she tells me that it came about largely because of the fame she found in Afghanistan. Well- known in the foreign territory for her detailed paintings depicting Afghan culture, Bawa was asked by the curators of the exhibition to send her artwork that celebrated it. Following naturally from this impressive success story, my questions turn back, once again to her journey and how she made it this far without ever receiving a formal training. Probed further, she reveals that she learnt to colour, quite late in her life (at the age of seventeen) and that too, from the internet. Colours opened up for her, a richer and brighter world that was otherwise largely inaccessible. Colours also lent an emotive dimension to her art, because now she could use different kinds of strokes as well to create different effects, as is evident from her paintings.
A mosque by Hana Bawa
Hana Bawa’s bold and confident strokes sweeping the surface of the canvas neatly are characteristically hers, and hence find a place in almost all the portraits. Asked about the painters who inspire her, Bawa counts three off the top of her head, out of which it (rather unsurprisingly) is Vincent Van Gogh who receives the first mention. Julie Dumbarton, a Scottish landscape painter and another Turkish painter Remzi Taskiren are the other two artists she mentions. Though widely separated from each other in terms of their style, cultural background and subjects they choose for their paintings, all of these artists excel in their skilful use of bold strokes. Van Gogh – in creation of post- impressionistic art that laid the foundation for modern art; Dumbarton in her effective employment of the technique in order to create a riot of colours on a harmonious landscape and Taskiran in his deployment of bold strokes in his portrait paintings to create an effect not very different from what Bawa’s achieves. Apart from these artists, Bawa also adds ‘cultures from around the world’ and ‘women’ to her list of influences and inspirations. With so much for a thought, I expect to hear of the politics that informs her paintings. Painting mostly women from middle- eastern cultures I assume carries a certain kind of latent political symbology, given the kind of times we are living in; but Hana vehemently denies any conscious political underpinnings to her alluring portraits.
She says “No, nothing political. I’m just drawn to these cultures because I cannot actually experience them, so I live them through my paintings and also allow others to access the same through them. For this reason, I do not paint portraits, I try to paint emotions. So, I focus a lot on the eyes – the windows to the soul.It is the look that captivates, not the colours, or the sketch. I paint anything that has a culture and meaning associated with it.”
Hana Bawa
We end the conversation with Bawa telling me about her four year old showing exactly the same skills as she did at his age, if not better. As I sit down to write this, and the world witnesses Bawa’s phenomenal skill and artistic genius, I smile with the hope that there’s another young life who might further enliven the world she has created and aims to create through her art – a world of emotions, passion, dreams and intrigue.
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