Anger too becomes a turning point in art. For well-known artist Madhvi Parekh, whose series The Last Supper, a collection of reverse paintings on acrylic based on Biblical tales was recently on display at the Visual Arts Gallery in Delhi, anger turns every stroke into gold.
Inspired by the work of Miro and Paul Klee and egged on by her contemporary and friend Nalini Malini (and her work, thought, expression in the reverse method) to explore the medium, Madhvi used the anger (a negative emotion) she would face while working with this particular medium owing to its tough and slippery nature; oodles of Mars black and gold and Indian tribal iconography to connect with Jesus and His journey. She says, “The reverse process is difficult to work with. At times I would get extremely angry to find myself losing control over the lines on the slippery surface. This led to an increasing use of Mars black to hide lines and strokes that went wrong (she smiles). But gradually, the doing and undoing of lines in black gave the work a raw texture and I found the joy gradually while working on the series.”
Madhvi’s The Last Supper series is classicism bathed in folk iconography, rustic pride and colours. In the painting The Last Supper, (in the picture) which is part of the series, shows Jesus and his disciples seated on a table laden with drinks, fruits and food in a flat dimension space. Madhvi has painted a colourful indigenous curtain of tribal motifs to Da Vinci’s silent and solemn backdrop, giving it an extended narration. There are windows, like in Da Vinci’s classic, that open to a background of hills.
The several portraits of Jesus look like they were pieces from a retrospective guided by thought and belief, interspersed and crowded with bird and animal motifs, ladders, huts, boats, water, skies—blank, black, grey and blue, stars, moon and movement, of life crawling up and down, around Jesus, watched by his wide and calming eyes. The portraits look like they were remnants of the mirror images of Jesus’ portrait in Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial in Israel that Madhvi had visited in 2007 with her husband and well-known veteran artist Manu Parekh. How does Madhvi Parekh use memory? “I have a sharp memory for portraits, art works and places I see during travel. When I returned to India from Israel, I had a clear image of Christ’s portrait I saw at the Holocaust Memorial in my mind. I use my recalling power a lot in my drawing,” she adds.
The drawings in black, white and grey are path-breaking. Madhvi was drawn to Biblical tales since childhood. “I had a Christian friend who introduced me to Biblical tales. She told me stories about the Immaculate Conception, the birth in stable. I was also drawn to the image and iconography associated with the Devi (which eventually led to a full fledged series of paintings).” As a child, Madhvi would use natural colours for decorations during the festive season in her village in Gujarat. “I wish I could achieve the natural yellow, red and green with synthetic colours I use now,” she says.
Madhvi wasn’t taught art. She initiated herself into painting during her pregnancy at 24. Manu says, “I will indulge in a lot of intricate pencil work, may be only black and white drawings in ‘reverse’. But I am in awe of her ability to handle the difficult medium for a very complex narration.”