My Tryst with Art

03 Oct My Tryst with Art

It began just as it begins for everyone – careless abandon of childhood and a few crayons.

Being an introvert as a child meant dealing with a lot of pent up emotions. I started scribbling my feelings in chalk. Wiping my emotions out with a rag, without a trace, worked very well for me.

Then came puberty. Like countless other young women, my body started revolting against its own self. How disgusting and unnatural these changes felt! Everything which was certain about my own body transformed. Even people expected me to “behave” now that I was not a child anymore.

Art came to my rescue.

In a tiny nook near our guava tree, I would prime cardboards torn out of old notebooks. I would write visual poetry in poster colours. They were dark patterns. Serpents of colours merging with each other. Amorphous shapes which really didn’t mean anything in particular. For the lack of vocabulary, I called my work “modern art”. Hardly anyone knew about my secret stash of artworks.

When the awkwardly painful phase of puberty passed away, I had a deep urge to destroy my art. And I did.

I allowed myself to indulge in art only on birthday cards.

There were stray incidents on paintings thereafter. When something affected me a lot, I had to paint. For instance, reading Hamlet for the first time moved something in me. I borrowed my sister’s poster colours and chart-size paper to paint my interpretation of a particular verse from the play (“A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm”). Again, during my pregnancy, I began to paint abstracts. My husband inspired me to paint for each month of the nine-month journey. However, in a while, it felt too formulaic and I abandoned the project.

By the time I was a professor of English at a reputed institute of higher learning, I had begun to see myself only as an academic. With scholarships and publications that I had, I should have felt accomplished. Yet I felt an inexplicable vacuum that I knew had to be addressed. I believed that art would once again fill that nagging gap.

I began seeking out people to teach art to me. I didn’t have the courage to start on my own. I finally was inspired by a friend who mentioned about her own training where her teacher made her recreate some old masters by using oil pastels. She insisted that I try the same. Thanks to her, my inhibitions broke and I plunged into practicing art headlong. My first pastel painting was a reproduction of “Wheatfield with Crows” by Vincent Van Gogh, which, incidentally, was his last painting.

Very soon, I had to create my own world out on paper. I taught myself acrylic. I made a fool of myself at art supplies stores asking the most basic questions about using various art mediums. I failed, I stumbled, I learned. I always had the support of my colleagues, family, and friends.

I was very fortunate to have met my mentor. She helped me shape my voice and gave me confidence. Her fearlessness in pursuing her vision taught me to pursue mine. Through her, I finally understood that if you allow art to reclaim your life, it allows you to claim it for yourself too.

While watching, “As You Like it” at Shakespeare’s Globe London in 2017, I was inspired to re-interpret his works on canvas. I started working on the series, “The Bard in Acrylic”. I decided that I have to share my labour with everyone who would care. I walked into a gallery and booked the dates for a solo exhibition in December 2018.

Nothing could have been a more foolhardy statement than an unschooled woman in her mid-30s calling herself an artist!

I intend to remain foolhardy and bold in my art practice.

Image Credit Wikipedia.