At 74, Uma Bardhan is an inspiration for many. The septuagenarian not only paints daily but is also a regular participant in art shows in and around Delhi. Moving with the times, she also uses digital platform to showcase and sell her works. She’s not very fluent in English or Hindi, but speaks exceptionally well through her brush and colours – her works, especially water colour on silk,stand testimony to this.
After her recently concluded show at AIFACS, Bardhan has taken a much-deserved break for some days. But it won’t be long before she gets back to her studio. On any given day, the artist spends around five to six hours, drawing and painting. Her repertoire includes naturescapes, city life, Indian mythology and spirituality. She paints using different mediums and genres – figurative paintings, landscapes, watercolour on silk, oil on canvas and water mixable oil on canvas.
Born to an eye surgeon father and a homemaker mother, Bardhan loved art since childhood. Ably supported by her mother, she enrolled at the Birla Art College for her graduation. “But my life changed when I came in contact with my guru Maniklal Banerjee, ex-professor, Government College of Arts & Craft, Calcutta (now Kolkata), who specialised in a very rare media, water colour on silk. It is a painstaking process where a special silk cloth is mounted on board and used as a painting,” explains Bardhan.
“I love learning different mediums of art and making them unique by sharing a different story in each of them,” avers Bardhan, who mainly paints stories and themes under-represented in the mainstream, contemporary culture. She’s also known for her Bengal School of Art paintings, a style of Indian painting that was born in Kolkata and Santiniketan, and later flourished throughout the Indian subcontinent.
Her paintings are an endeavour to find out the secret significance of form and appearance.
“It is about discovering one’s deeper self, giving soul form to the vision and remoulding of the material and natural shape to express psychic truth of it. The purity and the power to outline the rhythmic unity of significance in all parts of an indivisible artistic whole comes with it,” she says, adding, “All my paintings look distinct, but the common thread running through are the weaves around India and Indian women.”
The Kolkata-born Bardhan has been living in Gurugram since 2000, after her son, daughter and son-in-law moved here.
She loves the city, and why not? She’s witnessed its transformation from a small sleepy town to a Millennium City over last 18 years, and develop not only in terms of real estate, but also culturally and socially. “Earlier, there were no art or cultural activities happening here. Now, we have The Epicentre, an art and cultural hub. A lot of private art galleries are coming up here, further changing the face ofGurugram,” observes Bardhan.
Though she claims to be an introvert, she’s the first to get ready for a trip. “I love travelling. I have travelled far and wide in India, from the deserts of Jaisalmer to the Ganges at Gomukh, Rishikesh, Varanasi and the shallow waters at Sunderbans.” Perhaps, that’s why her paintings reflect diversity and versatility evident in Indian culture and heritage.