Meandering through Nature

Monica Arora

Four master artists, one theme: landscape and drawings. An exhibition, Landscapes, brings together four eminent artists who try to tap the elusive and ever-evolving landscape in their sketches.

There is the representational realism of New Delhi based artist Paramjit Singh’s. Inspired by “how light was painted by the Impressionists, post-Impressionists, and German Expressionists”, all of his eleven sketches speak a language of their own. The charcoal crayons on paper are well-defined, confident strokes that depict trees, hills, general backdrops and so on through his deft and clean lines. The signature depiction in most is that of tall, green trees that seem to dominate the landscape, most likely in thicketed jungles, whilst in the bigger, latter pieces one sees a single kuchcha pathway meandering its way into the dense overgrowth. 

The abstract specialist Ram Kumar’s Untitled works, created in pen and ink on paper, are part of his 1971 creations that have defied all boundaries of time and space, literally and metaphorically. With dimensions of 11”X15”, he has discarded conventional rules of recreating landscapes and instead revels in the world of clean lines, blocks, squares, and rhombuses and quadrilaterals, besides deploying basic dots and rectangles to represent a holistic picture. One painting with acrylic on paper interestingly depicts various cross-sections of what appears to be a dockyard by the sea, whilst the remaining creations date more than two decades ago to1996.

Chameli Ramachandran has been deeply influenced by her Shantiniketan years whilst growing up as well as Chinese heritage references that she draws heavily from. Having studied a multitude of floral blossoms during a visit to Toronto, she paints chrysanthemums, peonies, lotuses, lilies, carnations and many more awe-inspiring flowers in her characteristic style that is unique owing to its sheer beauty in simplicity. Artworks from 2015 in water colour depict brushstrokes that appear meditative and ethereal. Each translucent layer of the delicate petals, stem, tendrils and the central nucleus present forth an oeuvre that extends well beyond botanical drawings and creates an almost spiritual dimension.

A Ramachandran’s paintings have spanned distinct transformations in style, right from his expressionist depiction of the turmoil of city life in his early works to his propensity towards the tribals of Rajasthan. A village belle washing her lustrous tresses in the village stream with the temple visible in the backdrop is a delightful piece of water colours on paper from 2015. Featuring several more village or tribal women in their lush natural surroundings encompassing forests and butterflies and birds and bees, these lovely lasses are seen enjoying the others’ company in the blissful arms of Mother Nature. All these are captured in 6 paintings from 2013, and one from 2011. A striking artwork created in 2016 has stunning colours and shades of emerald green, blues, pinks and other earthy hues that render it into an interesting composition. 

As the Pullitzer award-winning American author John Steinbeck wrote, “I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer — and what trees and seasons smelled like — how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odours is very rich.” Looking at these landscape paintings by the four artists, one leaves with that smell of nature that lingers faintly in the deep recesses of the mind.