Artist Chameli Ramachandran has an immersive relationship with both nature and art. For someone born and brought up in Santiniketan, this is quite expected. It is not just her love for nature that is worth imbibing though. but also her zest for life. She is 80, and suffering from a disorder of the spinal cord since 12 years, but that hasn’t stopped her from working.
“I have a lot to learn. but I cannot work as before,” she says. Ramachandran is having a solo show of her works at Vadhera Art Gallery in Defence Colony. It has 95 works, done in the last two years. In these works, the artist has expanded her symbolic vocabulary of the flower and its parts by viewing them as metaphors for life and death.
The flowers include orchids, Sthala Padma (Hibiscus mutabilis), simul (silk cotton), and various kinds of lilies, chrysanthemums, carnations and crotons, each having a benign loveliness about it. In her mandala- like compositions, Ramachandran strives to balance the luminescence using precise colour, chromatics and texture, as a result of which the end result sparks joy and warmth. Talking about the show, she says,
“It is all about flowers; how they bloom and wither away in no time, reminding one of the short span of human life. I am reminded of a song of Tagore where he says in spite of sorrow, death and pangs of parting there is peace, joy and the eternity of life and existence.” Ramachandran most ly works with Chinese ink and brush and her works are generally monochromatic.
“There was a time when I was working with only gold with black ink, and very happy doing so. But when I paint flowers I am compelled to use colours as it is not possible to express the beauty and the delicate feel of a flower without using colours. Like, I used bright pink to convey the luxuriousness of beautiful Sthala Padma,” she says. She owes her love for nature as well as art to her days at Santiniketan.
“Tagore conceived Santiniketan in the mould of ancient tapovanas in the cradle of nature. It was like utopia. There’s art everywhere; murals on the walls of buildings done by master artists like Nandalal Bose and Benode Behari Mukherjee and monumental sculptures by Ramkinkar Baij. We heard melodious Rabindra Sangeet day in and day out. In such an environment it was only natural that I went to Kala Bhavana to learn art,” she says. Among the artists she looks up to are Abanindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose and Benode Behari Mukherjee, old Chinese masters and some the Japanese masters.
Ask her about the online shows and Ramachandran is quick to remark, “I belong to twentieth century and have no aptitude for technology. But it is great that online shows can reach a great number of viewers which physical shows cannot. But then, it is actual viewing that gives you the full depth of a work.”
TILL: Feb 18