Page 42 - Studio International - October1968

Below Untitled Watercolour and inks
Right Drawing 1963, 13¼ x 19 in. Coll : Earl of Harewood

Tiger 1965, watercolours and inks, 15 x 22 in.

bols of the soul's love of God, and sculpture of lovers at the height of The search has led me from landscapes to trees, even to cities. The
union is often interpreted as the marriage of the soul with God. trees metamorphosed into human heads, then to figures, and so on.
Indian poets and painters have often treated nature as reflecting Then I went inside the heads. As well as being human textures,
the ways and needs of lovers. It was also thought of as a mysterious which I love, they became thinking heads. Art has always been,
presence, imbued with strange powers affecting fertility. This con- always will be, the essential instrument in the development of human
cept is, for example, conveyed in sculptures of human figures consciousness.
crowned by branches of a tree. All of these ideas, latent in so much Many of my pictures convey the sensation of senses worn out,
Indian religion, culture, art, and poetry, are part of my heritage, and stretched beyond elasticity, so that the sensitivity for each individual
they appeared unconsciously as I drew and painted. unit or feeling in all its variety, i.e. temperature, speed, skin, energy,
However, about my attitude towards technique and style: I have specific gravity, fuse as it were. It is as if a fish, leaping from the cold
always preferred to draw first rather than to paint direct; ideas wet depths up towards the light, were to find itself bound by nets,
materialize more spontaneously. I start a drawing without any pre- or held down by the water's surface—sometimes the actual struggle
conception, having a natural compulsion to think on paper—the is very near the surface. The tortuous journey from the bottom of the
very approach is exciting. I don't paint in the way I draw; neither sea has already been accomplished.
do I work in glass the way I paint. Each medium is used for the way The human being is involved in a relentless search for enlighten-
it wants to work—and yet to suit my intention and purpose exactly. I ment and satisfaction and, in the struggle to find it, dissipates himself
don't even care how different and dissimilar the results are as long in all sorts of directions—false directions repeated again and again in
as I can communicate to others. This, to me, is all-important, which the continual search for satisfaction. This is aimed at in my paintings.
is why it is so difficult to resist 'over-emphasis'. I'm still trying to solve in everyday shapes and forms the problems
The artist must not only see the world, smell it, feel it, arid yet be a that continue to exist for me: I don't'think there's any such thing as a
participating part of it—he must also interpret it. His function is not finished painting, although art does evolve; aesthetic awareness has
just to pay lip-service to the obvious fact that it exists, or on how progressively increased in scope and depth. But most people are too
many different levels it exists—his function is to study it, understand, lazy, or too busy, to free their minds from their immediate circum-
and then, only then, to monumentalize it. stances and situation to contemplate a picture, or a wood carving, or
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