Artistic dilemma – The Passions of The Mind !

painting

“A beautiful thing never gives so much pain , as does failing to hear and see it ! ” – GUTAV KLIMT

As I come across this quote from my favourite artist my eyes are drawn to the easel on which rests the long forgotten canvas with its half drawn lotus leaves and lotuses standing in solemn impeccable majesty -defeated ….

Something nudges me to step out of myself and step into the roleplay of an observer ….

And what unfolds infront of me is a very interesting on going tete- a-tete between the artist and its beloved the mysterious canvas !

Presiding over this from afar with clinical clarity a thought arises in my mind …what goes on in the deepest recesses of an artist’s body mind and soul to create a dramatic interplay between colour and a story ?

In the words of Picasso –

” painting is a blind man’s profession .” He paints not what he sees , but what he feels , what he tells himself about what he has seen ”

A canvas I see day after day month after month has its own story to tell after waiting for more than a year to see and feel and experience the joy of creation , the warmth of colours , its sensual affair with the brush .

Life is beautiful BUT a paradox full of ecentricity – a moment etched in the soul of the artist – the ‘ REJECTION ‘ of a lotus pond as a gift , solidified in the being of the artist and the forlorn canvas still looking forward to be dressed in the luxury of imagination and wonder …

The sheer inability of the hands to pick up the longing brush and paint… somewhere still ‘FROZEN IN TIME ‘

The expectant crest fallen canvas – a would be ‘ GIFT ‘ rejected even before it could carry the expression , the imminent pain and torment of maybe never being accepted flows like turbulent tsunamis through and through !

The half drawn skeletons of the entities of the lotus pond crying out to the artist to fill them with the nurturing exuberance of the life giving colours !

Both a daily reminder to each other – suffering silently from the current irreversable side effects of abnegation …the artists dilemma a lotus pond painted earlier as a gift rejected after completion and this lotus pond again a gift rejected even before its inhabitants saw the light of colours . This relinquishment ,the ultimate coup de grace for both the artist and the woe-begone canvas yet to show off its story of the mystical lotus pond ,
Neither willing to bow down .. these written lines a way of rehabilitation of their being , an observation of the twist of fate of the JINXED GIFTS OF THE LOTUS PONDS !

I silently witness the trauma and grief of them both , their unconditional love for each other , their misery , they looking for something someone to outcreate and dissipate the battle of the ultimate jinxes …

Through the heart of the desolate entity of the canvas flow out these lines as assauging consolation for itself the – ‘ ‘forlorn canvas ‘ , these lines from another favourite – a Padam shri urdu poet Ghulam Rabbani ‘ taban ‘

manzilon se begana aaj bhi safar mera
raat be-sahar meri dard be-asar mera
ab tere taġhaful se aur kya talab kiije
shauq-e-na-rasa mera ishq-e-mo’atabar mera
Asman ka shikva kya vaqt ki shikayat kyuun
ḳhoon-e-dil se nikhra hai aur bhi hunar mera !

Shalini Gupta is an artist

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