The Village

…he started to whisper. ‘It’s because all the images inside our heads have come from the world of ideas. That’s where we really belong, you know - not down here…where time snaps at everything we love.’

~ The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder

A Village After Dark by Kazuo Ishiguro

Partition

The illustration above is one of three I was commissioned to do by the Commonwealth Writer’s website, Adda, to remember 70 years of violent, bloody Partition of the sub-continent. While I was given complete freedom to conceptualize the illustrations, it was suggested that I make all three with some kind of connecting thread to them. For this I used similar colors, red, black and white and a certain similarity to the landscape.

The illustration above is for a powerful story called ‘Regional Division’ by Sidra Zia. In the image, to depict division and violence I’ve used dramatic colors – red and black and torn paper; to show migration, I've poured the mayhem of million birds in the air, I've splattered red for bloodshed; I want the dramatic illustration to draw out all the emotions in the story.

The second illustration is for the non-fiction section, Speaking of Partition is a complex piece about communication; language and words in relation to Partition - whether what comprises a language is adequate enough to describe what happened during the Partition, the author is on a train journey, she talks about how the moment you board a train you can sometimes arrive at your destination.

The third piece shown below, is for a poem called That Part of Us.

More and more when I read such stories, when I hear Urvashi Butalia talk about her book, The Other Side of Silence, when I read Shashi Tharoor dismantling false constructions that we were (and still are taught in schools), I thank heavens for the power of stories that hold up the truth before our eyes.

*

Maybe happiness is this: 

not feeling like you should be elsewhere 

doing something else, being someone else.

        ~ Isaac Asimov

Things I do

For Suttonese People -

Hers and His birthday cards.

Over at a Blog Down Under

I am guest writer over at Local Story Space, a wonderful Australian blog featuring creative women. I decided to write on the subject of what Beauty means to me, why it is so important to me and how it inspires what I make.
You can read the post by clicking the link over here >>>

Bits and Pieces on my Table

1) Rub honey into the night's back,

2) Make sure the moon is fed,

3)Bathe the ocean,

4) Warm sing the trees.

            ~ Tend

My mother resembled a character out of an Isabel Allende novel. she was one of those Piscean/Aquarians who would often declare that she could see visions of things that happened in a place, of incidents that might have happened if... She would periodically move heaven and earth so that the world around her could fit into her visions irrespective of the disruptions it caused. 

One thing she did prove right was the fact that she would die and some five years before her death she went about clearing out the books in her large cellar with the energy characteristic of every mission she undertook. The result was that I was given some very beautiful old books. 

I treasure these books for their beauty except one, a vintage PR exercise about Queen Victoria. Because of the subject matter, I've decided it can be sacrificed in the name of art. The paper is so old it practically disintegrates at times but the cherubic faces of the little royal princes is perfect for cutting up and playing with. The resulting compositions have become bizarre worlds within the pages of my new Moleskine sketchbook and I have been taken aback by what has emerged. Perhaps they are comparable to my mother's visions? In this case, I am thankful they are only on paper.

These pictures I made during the last two days are probably a progression of The Red Book project which I did years ago. They have turned out more sophisticated and muted compared to an earlier cutting up of Kings and Queens within The Redbook. I have included a picture of it below.

Deep down inside, I'm mad … we're all mad here, really. 

If you've read this far, you're probably about to go nuts right now.

~ from another excellent interview by Mahendra Singh.

Thundercloud and Bare Tree

From the Bits and Pieces box

I had to remove the foreground of mountains to replace on a different background. When I peeled off the mountain, the Fevistick and remnants of charcoal ended up producing this very interesting texture.I drew and cut out a tree and placed it over to make an image. I love the variety of textures that has resulted in this happy accident.The best surprises happen while playing.

Transition

Maybe the journey isn't about becoming anything. Maybe it is about unbecoming everything that isn't really you so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.

                                    ~ S.S.

Mountains and Valleys

At some point, we are all headed home. 

At some point, all of this, 

everything and everyone 

became memory.

                    ~ JW

Creepsome

When I was working on an illustration this afternoon,I ended up drawing a child with a strange expression. Whichever way I turned, the child's intense gaze followed me. The juxtaposition of cut out images on my table looked very interesting beside the child's face. I decided to take some photographs and put them up on my blog.This would probably work well for a macabre children's story. The lethal pair of scissors and the child's expression open up a lot of possibilities.

Blue and Green

In Bangalore and Montreal.

Favourite Things

A New Philosophy

Whenever I come across the beautifully worded truths written by Buddhist monks and the virtually omnipresent Rumi I pause and contemplate these philosophies and decide with my hand on my heart that I must, must, must adopt them into every moment of my life. Unfortunately, there is usually a new beautiful philosophy presenting itself on Facebook every single day. And then there is the fact of real life and real people to deal with in a real world. I find that at such times my brain can hardly sift through a dozen peace poems or twenty Rumi quotes that I saw this week already. BUT, during very such times I find myself totally embracing an unforgettable philosophy that has worked miracles in my life since 2012. It has eliminated the *&%# and brought in fresh, sparkling energy. I have decided to share it here not because I give a **** about those who will be shocked but because I feel it partners very well with the ship picture above and I frantically needed a convincing new year philosophy after I came up with that damn title. So here it is! Onward to new philosophies then!

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck

A Superb Ending

I have just received the latest copy of the beautiful and very readable The Indian Quarterly magazine with my illustration in it for the story Mountain Disease, my first assignment since returning home. The story extract was a very challenging one because it consisted of a lot of conversation taking place in a school. There was no strong visual description within the story that I could use to capture the essence of it. However while re-reading the conversations within the extract, I found that it dealt with prejudice - about appearances, colour, places, intelligence, looks, wealth, gender... it was all there. I chose to depict it by drawing two symbolically different faces (by varying the eyes and the colour) and depicting the unpleasantness of racism in the conversation through snakes coming out the mouths of the faces .The colours are muted and cold. The atmosphere created in this image echoes the mood of the story.

I don’t use software while creating my images and I do everything using my hands, pastel, paper and a pair of scissors. Someone whose opinions I value a great deal pointed out that in a world of buffed and polished, perfectly finished images, this business of working directly with my hands makes my visuals unpredictable, spontaneous and very distinctive - qualities which give my images depth. I am glad to hear that. Probably because of these results, the kind of illustration work that I have been invited to do in these last few months has been very interesting to say the least.

2015 has been a year of hair-raising adventures, mind-boggling challenges and fantastic experiences across continents. It is a year that I will never forget especially if I consider my mindset during the start of the year and how I feel now. A friend in Montreal once assured me that everything would turn out all right. I didn't believe her then but I thank her for that reassurance now. This year has ended in the best way possible. Apart from the warm and supportive friendships that have been constant throughout this year, I can consider getting a copy of this particular magazine with my illustration in it as a sign of a very good ending to 2015.

Island of my Dreams

Foreign lands never yield their secrets to a traveler. The best they offer are tantalizing snippets, just enough to inflame the imagination. The secrets they do reveal are your own - the ones you have kept from yourself. And this is reason enough to travel, to leave home.

~ G. Sparkes

One day I will improve my photography skills and figure out how to take clearer pictures as well as remove the distortion. This picture above does not show the beautiful pale yellow colour and lovely texture of the background paper which is Canson Mi-tientes Lichen. Both the picture of the water and the island were done on Hoesch Watt paper and affixed on to the background. This picture is 25.5 x 21.5 inches in size.

Also, thanks to my blog, it is very nice to be reminded how sketches I made from visits to places a couple of years ago manifest themselves in an illustration in a different context. The picture of the island is very reminiscent of the first picture in this post of a boulder at Hampi.

From the Bits and Pieces Box

Waste bits and pieces collected and juxtaposed in pages of my sketchbooks create the most interesting and unusual compositions. Looking at these pictures makes me feel I am turning the pages of a very strange picture book where I never know what the next page will bring. Just like real life.

Blue Seedpod

Lessons
Living Blue

Patience

View from my window. Graphite, Collage.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

The things that I wanted most happened to me last year when I least expected it, when I was occupied doing other things, like doing what I loved and enjoying life. I achieved a kind of professional success I never imagined would happen to me - fantastic assignments, great fees and a sale of paintings which astonished me. But before I could let it sink in, it was time to leave, to new adventures and onto something that I had planned and worked so hard upon for the last four years and wanted so much for the last twenty.

When you return from studying abroad back to India or when you move to a foreign country from Indian shores, there are always high expectations of you. The underlying expectation is always variation of the same presumption and always unimaginative – you have to become an instant success immediately. The word success is always defined by one thing alone – money, or the appearance of having some. The resulting anxiety created when you are in your twenties and thirties is enormous, a façade has to be created for the approval of the community lest you be ignored and discarded, if you don’t flaunt yourself instantly and continuously, professionally and personally you are quickly assumed a failure, the times become strange, empty and anxious, nobody waits for roots to sink in or branches to spread.

I came to Canada at a time when I have the right mindset to face the challenges of being an immigrant alone in a foreign city. In the last six-months I have thankfully manifested no headline-grabbing success. Instead, I experience each day as it comes and spend my time learning, integrating and absorbing. I am trying to fit in pieces of a puzzle to make a complete picture, but I am discovering that with each piece I search for and fix into place, the picture constantly changes and takes a life of its own. I have to accept that and follow it through to see where it leads me. The act of creating this picture was once a vision in the distant future. It is now the task of the present.

l'hiver

Winter is a strange dream, monochromatic, abstract, bleached of all inessentials. Unusual images, alternate textures, pieced together on white paper. It is dark at noon and snowflakes fall. Flurries. Oh, the utter absolute frightening beauty of it all.