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WOMAN OF THE WEEK

Portrait of a painter-poet

Deliberate and painstaking effort characterises her paintings and prints. Meet artist-poet Premalatha Seshadri

FOUR DECADES OF ART Premalatha Seshadri

She walks with precise, measured steps, picks her words carefully. She won't allow me to rush her. "Wait till I make the lemon juice," she says, putting the tall glasses on the table. Neatly, in their allotted places. That's Premalatha Seshadri for you. She won't shoot off words, lines or colours in a hurry. Deliberate, considered, painstaking effort characterises her paintings and her prints. Probably the reason for her presence in Chennai's art circle for four decades.

Premalatha had to become a painter and a poet. Sure, she had the talent but look at the circumstances. She was a lonely child in a sprawling Bangalore bungalow. She scribbled to amuse herself and eventually qualified for an art course in high school. She came to Chennai for four years of art education at the College of Arts and Crafts, watched KCS Panicker, Anthony Doss and Ram Gopal draw and paint, returned to Bangalore to teach art to kids in East West School. Three years in the school art department taught her to weed out, judge and encourage art forms. She went to Hyderabad for lessons in block printing, designed saris that she says, became fashionable.

It was time for her first show. She printed, etched, painted, prepared and exhibited in Bangalore in 1968 and has since been packing off her frames to solo and group displays in the U.K., the U.S. and elsewhere. She won a British Council Scholarship (later a visitorship) to Hornsey College of Art and fellowships from the Government of India. All the major galleries in Chennai have found space for her oils, etchings, ink drawings and watercolours.

Inspired by husband

In the 1970s, she met and married scientist C. V. Seshadri. With him she travelled to several countries, peeping into their art museums — classical, contemporary and futuristic — and writing poetry when she wasn't. At her Gandhian husband's request, taught village women in Gandhigram, Madurai, silkscreen printing using vegetable dyes.

In 1980, she came to Injambakkam. While husband worked in labs with thatched roofs, she built her home, furnished it with antique pieces and settled down to paint pictures and weave words. Her poems, she says, "were inspired by association with my husband," but tragically, some of her best canvases, Injambakkam landscapes, were done to tide over his loss (he died in an accident). "They were therapeutic," she clarifies. She sketched and exhibited in Bangalore, was commissioned by private collectors and galleries in Chennai, lectured at her college and at Stella Maris, did book illustrations and learned to lead life "as a single independent woman".

The bird form has "persistently attracted" her, perhaps a result of days near the Cauvery in Mysore. "It has gone through avatars ending in an abstraction suggested by an image," she explains. Translate those "arty" phrases and you understand her work. She has tried several styles — calligraphic, pastoral and abstract — and a variety of mediums. She is Asian in her line and form with blank spaces that can be filled later. Some of the bird/fish series seem to be comments on society.

Is a colourful abstract what you get when you hold up a canvas during Holi? Latha has an explanation. "Abstraction is an art of suggestion. What you see is the essence, with the excess pared down. The lines are contemplated ones, nothing is accidental." Oh, well. "It is the artist's interpretation of a subject." Whoa, gives everyone a chance!

Her canvas today is crowded with memories as her studio is with memorabilia. But Premalatha has much to add. She is planning a second book of poems and she will continue to experiment with colours and ideas.

"I became an artist in lonely times," she says. Her few women classmates have brushed aside their drawing and painting skills and she doesn't know why. "You can learn craftsmanship but you need to be intellectually engaged to it, with the focus on the craft you have mastered," is her conclusion.

GEETA PADMANABHAN

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