A tall pine tree stands guarded in the backdrop of a beautiful British countryside church. The foreground minaret of the church moves upward through a strip of trees which in any colour sketch could be autumnal yellow, orange or red with a bit of mauve. Leaves are vividly sketched, subtly juxtaposing with the trunks and branches surrounded by darker shades of the same hues.
Manoj Kumar’s landscapes are intimate, realistic and at the same time eloquent. The intentionally greyish landscapes suggest a mood with all its subtle romanticism. An artist by hobby and a civil servant by profession, who has been making pencil sketches for more than 25 years, he tackled a variety of genres, including landscapes and still life.
But landscape sketching is very special to him. Every time he sketches the landscape, he says, it’s like going home.
These sketchings usually record an immediate response to what an artist sees outdoors. But none of Manoj Kumar’s landscapes are awash in vivid or unexpected colours to embellish and animate the various elements of a scene. All of them have a very greyish, monotonous look, yet leaves a sharp, penetrating and fine tuned experience in the spectator’s mind.
“It’s a stress-buster for me, a kind of escape from all the hectic work which keeps me busy all the day,” says Manoj Kumar, presently serving as secretary of NoRKA Department, Government of Kerala.
Four of Manoj’s laminated landscapes hang on his office walls, a look at which would take him back to the good old days at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) in Mussoorie, blanketed by a layer of fog amid the pine woods.
“I had a good time during my stint as the director of the Academy. The days were comparatively relaxed which gave enough shove to fine tune my hobby of sketching the landscapes,” he says, pointing to the Academy church right on the wall opposite to his seat in his office.
The main building, the surrounding ones, the church, all became models for his sketches. These sketches made their way as far as the office of the then President APJ Abdul Kalam! “The colleagues at the Academy felt that my sketches were worthy ones, and these were imprinted on porcelains-on cups, plates etc,” he says with a smile. Getting these punched on porcelain was cheaper, costing only as low as Rs 60, and these formed good mementos to all those dignitaries visiting the Academy. Soon, ties, the customary mementos till then, were replaced with the porcelain cups and plates bearing on them the striking pencil sketches of the Academy. “One of those was presented to President Abdul Kalam who had visited the Academy. He liked it very much and thus found space over his table”, he said.
Not just Mussoorie, he has made sketches out of all those places he travelled. “The landscape is never dull,” he says. “For me, it is the source of endless beauty and creative self-expression,” he says pulling out another portrait from the bunch which he sketched en route Kedarnath.
Manoj’s sketches are visually engaging and his lines create an aura of photographic realism, at times with intimations of surrealistic visions.