Echoes of Kashmir in paintings by a native of Chandigarh

Ravi S Singh

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 9

Many enjoy the values and views of nature, but extraordinary are the ones who exalt it by recreating them through recollection with the help of aesthetic but transcendental sense of art and beauty.

The recreations assume a dimension if they are recollected from about decade-long one’s association with natural ambience of Kashmir.

One such recreation of nature’s own automated life and its cycle vide the medium of painting, especially to reinforce the view that benevolent “Mother Earth” is there for real, if only one cares to be sensitive and have a panoptic and spiritual view of the world.

The spiritually replenishing scope of nature was in ample display through an exhibition of painting by Jyoti Nagpal, a native if Chandigarh, in the India International Centre (IIC) in Delhi. The exhibition was inaugurated by former Union Minister Dr Karan Singh.

Nagpal, who worked as teacher of French language in Chandigarh, Kashmir and Delhi, quit her job to take up painting as her full time activity.

She put up an Exhibition of a series of virtuoso paintings, which are in the traditions of Oil painting under the rubric “The Good Earth”, which was inaugurated by former Union Minister Dr Karan Singh.

Her inspiration to recreate the refreshing and myriad forms of nature came to her during the period of deafening silence and limpness of human life during Covid-19 inspired lockdown.

The recreations are from her recollection of her memories of a decade long association with pristine beauty of Kashmir (1976-87) when there was peace in the valley.

This was the time when flora and fauna bloomed, and the environment got invigorated due to less pollution. Nature was dressed up in all nines in all her luminosity and splendour in the face of absence of pollution with human beings bound in their homes.

The lockdown was also a reminder that nature has its own mystic way to punish capricious humans to restore order and equilibrium in the environment.

Although all the items of the paintings, which are immaculately framed, enthralled the visitors, the ones depicting an edge of a forest, and peacocks with their full plumage looked as natural as they could get. The scenic views have echoes of Kashmir.

“This collection of paintings is an attempt to portray the beauty of nature as I observe and perceive it,” Nagpal said.