Water babies

The water hyacinth is a beautiful but deadly plant. It saps the life out of any waterbody, rendering it dry and defunct. It also hides the muck that lies beneath its roots and leaves; the pretty purple flowers act as the perfect decoy. Painter Sebastian Varghese uses this plant as a metaphor to talk about the underlying tensions of the socio-political conditions in Kerala. All of Varghese’s paintings are beguilingly beautiful watercolours with an underlying story that may be discovered by a closer inspection of the works.

Indrapramit Roy lures his viewers into the dappled light of a large banyan tree reflected in a glass window, the shady coves of buildings or the twinkling lights of a festival set against an azure sky. Within each of these stunningly painted landscapes lies a hidden story that one can only guess at. There are small snatches of verse: Dylan Thomas’s Under Milkwood and Sukumar Ray’s Abol Tabol , that lead one into the hidden narrative. One can also simply enjoy the retinal pleasure that the works bring, soaking up the sanguine nature of their calming hues.

Roy and Varghese are displaying these works in Mezzaterra, a two-person show at the Threshold Gallery, in Delhi’s tony Sarvodaya Enclave till April 9.

Watercolours have always been valued below oil-on-canvas works because oils give the canvas longevity and allow the artist to portray three-dimensionality with greater conviction. However these breathtakingly beautiful works make one question this hierarchy. Often known among art snobs as the ‘poor person’s hobby-craft’, watercolour was actually favoured by the Tagore brothers, who promoted the Japanese Wash technique in the early 20th century at the Bengal School. The Tagores believed it formed a pan-Asian counter-narrative to British academic oil painting, which was mandatory in most art schools in India. Watercolour has recently re-emerged as an exciting alternative to oil paint.

Roy, who studied at Santiniketan, is one of the leading promoters of the wash technique. Mostly because it is immediate, transparent, and a demanding medium that leaves no room for error. He explains the ideas underpinning his technical prowess: “Mezzaterra is an imagined territory, an idea, but a very real and pervasive one, where echoes and reflections add depth and perspective, where identities are malleable and overlapping and not clear-cut and well-defined, where binaries are not the only defining theme,” says Roy. He has been teaching painting at his alma mater, Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaha Sayajirao University, Baroda since 1995, after studying in London at the Royal College of Art.

Varghese’s muse is water and it features in this suite of paintings and a video presented alongside the watercolours. “I have always loved the ability of watercolour to seduce the eye. In this instance I have worked with rice-paper and mounted it on canvas, so it lends the work a double-edged delight,” says Varghese. His penchant for water as a muse is because it has the ability to convey many moods and meanings, both personal and political. This metaphor has fascinated the artist since he was a child living in Kerala, surrounded by water and steeped in history (the early trade-routes that made Kochi an important port in Pre-British times). Varghese, who has studied art and visual design at the Richland College in Dallas, Texas, believes that one must not forget one’s roots. “Our fears are fluvial and passions fluid. This creates subtle agitations in the mind. But water plains can also bring tranquility at times. Their mere presence can be the milieu of our meditations,” says Varghese.

The artists are conjoined in their belief that the rewards of inhabiting the mezzaterra are enormous; it is teeming with possibilities. It endows each thing with ‘a patina of the old and shine of the new’. It means one can inhabit more than one language or culture at any given time. One can be both inside and outside of language, of culture. One’s stance cannot help but be both critical and empathetic.

The exhibition is evocative of these hinterlands where culture, politics and personal narratives come together in an aesthetic feast.

Indrapramit Roy &

Sebastian Varghese

Threshold Art Gallery,

C-221, Sarvodaya Enclave,

New Delhi -110017

On till April 9

Monday to Saturday, 11am – 7 pm

Georgina Maddox is a Delhi-based art writer

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