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Chameli Ramachandran’s garden of botanical lyrics 

Last month an unforgettable exhibition was Chameli Ramachandran’s still life studies of flowers and nature’s tensile terrain  that opened  at Vadehras in Delhi.

The moment you set your eyes upon her tender, tactile flower studies on the 1st floor at Vadehras you are immediately transported to the world of poets. Her lotus and chrysanthemum studies remind me of her historic exhibition at India International Centre in Delhi in 2010,  where Prof M.G.K.Menon waxed eloquent on the beauty of the languorous lilt of ink wash and watercolour and how she recreated a botanical garden with a few works of flowers and trees and hillocks sometimes lithely laced with snow peaks.Chameli’s list of still life studies consist of  orchids, sthalapadma (Hibiscus mutabilis), simul (silk cotton), and various kinds of lilies, chrysanthemums, carnations, cockscombs , areca palms and landscapes.

Lotus studies

Unforgettable was Prof Menon’s talk in which he spoke of his love for Rajasthan,  the varieties of the hibiscus flower, including the ‘ tropical hibiscus double orange, Chinese hibiscus, white hibiscus or rose mallow, and hibiscus rosa sinensis.’ He also spoke of the lotus at length, he said ,” Sanskrit has many words for lotus, one being pankaja, or “mud-born.” Panka means “mud,” and ja means “born.”

Chameli explained her love for the lotus in 2010 , “ I have a particular fascination for the lotus, it is truly unique imbued with the supreme quality of the eternal, finding expression in nearly all forms of religious art literature poetry and philosophical discourse. The lotus is beautiful but not easy to paint , it is always part of a larger more intricate structure of the plant and so one cannot be as selective in the part to be created.  Yet in its representation , lies endless scope. Over centuries from an ancient past to now the lotus has been demonstrated in so many mediums  in different ways of seeing.”

Monochromatic Mountain ranges 

“ I spent a great deal travelling many countries to see mountain ranges to see the oceans but my eyes failed to see at home so close by on the tip of a stalk a solitary sparkling dew drop.” Her statement unveils her love for the minuscule.

Chameli’s monochromatic mountain ranges on the top floor at Vahedras,  have a feathery wave of snow lacing their undulated crests and this creates a narrative of belonging to so many sojourns.

We can see that Chameli uses a finely kept brush to capture the delicacy of the feathery leaves of  different plants, trees and  shrubs. Sometimes she paints a whole tree, sometimes a complex detail.The palm fronds are an enchantment in the language of elusiveness.

Garden full of flowers

Here at Vadehras the Shimul  or silk cotton flowers form an immersive group and create a wave of memories.Her handling of form and her feathery , wispy strokes create a silent sonata.One recalls her curator in early years Ranesh Ray stating that her love for nature is translated into her concentrated precision for finding connotations in form and colour.Ray said her flower studies stand alone for their conceptualisation and the language of progression from bloom to the withering moments that are so minimal in mortality.

“ We had these flower plants/trees in our garden which used to blossom twice a year. The flowers look different throughout the day.  Here the flowers have withered. But I found them beautiful in their own ways. I have painted them as drying in different stages,”adds Chameli.

The Shimul flowers in its evanescent elegance echoe the sonorous notes of the Rabindra Sangeet songs that Chameli knows by heart.Her love for Tagore’s poetry could be seen in her exhibition at Grosvenor Gallery in 2010 when Vadehras unveiled her at Frieze. Chameli’s love for plant life over decades reflects embers and elements of  empathy including a distinct identification with the  world of botanics.Chameli’s long time friend the brilliant critic and curator  Ella Datta has said in the

past , ‘ her response to nature has been shaped by her Chinese heritage and her growing up in Rabindranath Tagore’s Shantiniketan.’

Blue spider lilies

At Vadehras viewers could gaze at the soothing  sway of the palm fronds, the luscious lilt in the movement of the kash phul plumes, as well as the  ethereal elegance  of the light blue spider lilies. In an email she explains:

“ You may be wondering why I painted white spider lily blue!  I was wondering how to paint a white flower on white paper. First I tried silver. But the silver was not clear enough So I added a little blue to the silver and I was happy with the result. Realism is not my aim any way .I just wanted  to create the feel of each object I painted.”

Smoky orchids and chrysanthemums

Chameli’s smoky embered orchids are a resonant study in the articulation of soft petalled perfection.One can sense her mastery over the medium and her love for lacing her strokes in threads of fine tendrilled calligraphic strokes that brim the depths of their being.She states: “ When I painted these blue orchid flowers some were quite dry and withered. I painted the dry ones also because I found them beautiful even in their dry form. ”Here too, it is the fragility of life that endears, as they droop in delicate feminine stupor.

Her chrysanthemums are a cherished lot. They present an  offering of contemplative idioms. She says: “ I have painted the chrysanthemums  as Mandalas. Here the emphasis is  on petals which are painted with fine flowing brush lines.”

These unique  flower studies express a  vision of the artist as an observer of deeper measures with a poetic intensity with which she creates her wispy melancholic meditations.

Colour and Form 

Ultimately this exhibition is an ode to the essence of colour and form.Within harnessing the technique of close encounters to creating her own pictorial vocabulary of undulating forms and soft gradations of tone, Chameli recreates botanical subjects into compositions that oscillate between abstraction and representation. No matter what her subject, Chameli seems to extend  elements of nature beyond its frames, as if without measurable boundaries.

By utilising  small, ordinary flowers and plants  to suggest the immensity of nature, she extols the beauty of the Purusha Prakriti principles of antiquity. Her cockscomb studies are a delight in the beauty of solitude. She says she got a box of sweets as a gift with a cockscomb on top and it inspired her to paint it.This show Offering at Vadehras brought back the famed poet Emily Dickinson’s lines :

  A sepal, petal and a thorn

Upon a common summer morn.

This exhibition in Delhi went beyond the realms of Shantiniketan to create an oasis of contemplative idioms in the creation of the eternal power of nature’s rhythms. It wouldn’t be wrong to state that it became an earth song in memory. Vadehras has also taken Chameli Ramachandran’s works of the same period,  in a collaborative  exhibition curated by Sidharth Siva Kumar at Gallery Rasa in Santiniketan.

IMAGES :VADEHRAS DELHI



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Views expressed above are the author’s own.



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