Artists are obsessed with nature as a muse in many forms: abstract, realistic, symbolic or even as the subconscious. The idyll gets an upgrade in Bhubaneswar-based artist Veejayant Kumar Dash’s work as art becomes more eco-sensitive with glaciers melting and the carbon footprint getting broader than brush strokes. Veejayant cannot escape the ecosystem’s swan song from dominating his canvas.
Conservation Through Layers by him has grabbed a permanent place at the National Museum of China. The painting was included in the recently concluded Shared Inspiration exhibition which showcased exhibits from all over Asia. Veejayant has been nominated by the Union Ministry of Culture, as a member of the Advisory Committee for National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, from 2019-2021.
While Veejayant’s art has been exhibited overseas in Singapore, Switzerland and at the Asian Art Biennale in Bangladesh, it is being shown at a national museum abroad for the first time in China. “I got a mail from the National Museum of China. I sent them some paintings and Conservation Through Layers was selected. The museum chose it for their permanent collection,” he says.
Veejayant has a preference for acrylic, which he finds akin to a mystery. He has followed the technique of the great masters by which the repeated process of applying colour on the canvas and washing away allows the residual pigments to give off a glow and create layers. Conservation Through Layers is a series of paintings as a project which Veejayant took up recently.
“All that we speak and share doesn’t happen instantly; rather everything has a past. Each painting in the series is dominated by an upside-down tree as represented in the tribal culture, which believes that roots reach out to the clouds. Taken further, the upside-down tree is symbolic of a human being; the roots represent the brain and the branches and leaves are body parts. Hence the name.” The painting sent to China is imbued with metaphors too apart from the tree motif.
A pillar symbolises architecture and intellect, an elaborately designed bed shows marriage, a lion for tradition and values, books signifying knowledge and with boats moored by the river bank that form important connect in the painter’s life. Veejayant counts Salvador Dali and MF Husain among his top influences. He has held many solo and group shows in Delhi, also Kolkata and Hyderabad. Besides commenting and writing on art, he is visiting faculty at National Institute of Fashion Technology, Bhubaneswar. Many layers, indeed.