Windswept canvases
RANA SIDDIQUI
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Bhaskar Singha from Kolkata explores air and Satyajit Ray's films on his canvas.
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EFFECT-WISE `Dreams', the work for which Bhaskar Singha won the Camlin Foundation Award.
He created some ripples with the Camlin Foundation Award that he received last year for his acrylic painting titled Dreams, but he is still a lesser-known name in the art fraternity. But that doesn't wilt his spirit. He is treading the artistic path, silently, by experimenting with his technique.
A sculptor by temperament and a watercolour and acrylic painter by expertise, Singha's creations magnetise the viewers with his "wind" technique as he prefers to call it. Through this technique, he attempts to give shape to abstract emotions by the flow of wind. And to this shape, he lends a transparent quality. For example; if his subject on the canvas is happy, he attempts to portray the feeling through smooth-flowing air. For anger, the wind turns gusty, cutting across the subject.
To depict peace, it envelops the character on the canvas from all sides; a wavy wind accompanies a playful character, and so on. Since his wind conveys the subject's state of mind, their features are often subdued.
The effect
This `transparent air', admits Singha, was difficult to achieve on the canvas with a tough and thick medium like acrylic. But now he excels at it. Cubes, cracks and light effect further weave themselves into his narration on the canvas, making his work look digital at times.
"I worked on it for over two decades and now it flows naturally through my brush," says a visibly contented Singha.
His technique can be viewed in his creations mounted at The Ashok hotel this Friday. The display will continue till this coming Monday. Film and theatre actor Rajit Kapoor inaugurates his show today at 12 noon.
"He studied my works thoroughly to get ready for the inauguration for he himself knows art," says Singha. The themes on his canvases vary from lesser privileged people like refugees in a perpetual dilemma to an adolescent unable to take a career decision, from the struggle of a common man to his ability to fight against darkness, and so on.
Another interesting subject on Sinha's canvases is his all-time favourite director Satyajit Ray's films, especially "Apur Sansar", "Pather Panchali" and "Gopi Guyin Bagha Bayen".
But we will have to wait to see these till his solo exhibition to be mounted at Lokayata Art Gallery from January 3 to 9, 2007.
"I have tried to depict important scenes from the films. For example, the little boy in `Pather Panchali' who wants to see the outside world and insists his sister come along. He is awe-struck as he experiences the world beyond his hut. I have tried to show his feeling through a crippling air," shares the alumnus of the Indian College of Art, Painting and Sculpture, Calcutta.
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