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An artist's mind

Girish Kumar's `Mindscapes' is a search to find the `other self'

PHOTO: S. MAHINSHA

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS `Mindscapes' is an introspection of sorts

`Mindscapes' - the word, did it set one guessing? Does it tell your mind what to expect from the paintings?

Did one expect unabashed anger, or celebration or a cleansing of the mind of the unpleasant and hopeless?

While all of this jostled for space in neat frames, the feeling that lingers is a reticent calm, a detachment and a coming to terms as it were.

An artistic expression

Works of art speak in multiple tongues and moods and `The Mindscapes' series of Girish Kumar were artistic expressions with spontaneity, but one that did not cast a dark brooding shadow on our minds.

A self-trained painter, Girish's excursions with the brush and palette were initially an effort at diversion and communication, an attempt to take the mind away from the distress that swathed him.

While one could discern the effort taken to etch the frames in his earlier works, the effortlessness is clear in the present lot.

Tones and lines

The ambivalence is no more, he uses tones and lines with a command which also reveals the artist's coming to terms with an idiom of his own.

While the starkness that emerges in the charcoal and ink frames cannot be missed, the works in acrylic and ink pen have a nebulousness with the shades he has used.

Although the artist states "`Mindscapes' is an introspection to find out the interactive spaces between life and death... ." there is more to it.

In all the detours, retracing and probing that the artist undertakes, there is also the search for the `Other Self,' which continues in the frames.

BHAWANI CHEERATH

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