Tranquil Spaces

While in his first series,Parekh focuses on the temple domes,the shrines and the lapping waters of the Ganga,in his latest series which consists of 18 oil paintings,he shifts the focus to natural elements: the trees,the flowers,the air and the water. “What I wish to capture is the atmosphere of the place,” says Parekh.

In signature Parekh style,wild colours are stitched together in a rough-hewn manner,obliquely hinting at a chaotic cauldron of emotions. There is a compressed disturbance in the works which is a rarified form of the turmoil present in some of Parekh’s earlier works such as his series on the Bhagalpur blinding which he did almost three decades ago. If Parekh’s paintings then were a reflection of the collective psyche of fear,then Banaras represents the transition to faith.

“I was never a political or an intellectual painter. I’ve always been a human painter endeavoring to extrapolate central human fears and feelings,” says Parekh. The artist who won the Padma Shree in 1992 has subscribed to a tenet expounded by contemporary artist Joseph Beuys,“Show your wounds.” Parekh prefers to do it through his art.

Everyone from M F Husain to Thomas Danielle to Ram Kumar has swooped in on the artist’s paradise that is Banaras. Parekh’s Banaras too is not devoid of influences mostly of Rabindranath Tagore and FN Souza. While Tagore infused the space with a potent spirituality,Souza’s work,feels Parekh,radiates a power that is missing from the perspectives of many other artists. While European artists painted landscapes with the sky in the background and water in the foreground,Tagore reversed the trend by lavishing attention to the background and swathing the middle in shadows. Parekh trotted in his footsteps.

But despite the points of confluence,Parekh’s Banaras stands disjointed from the rest- for its strong strain of faith,latticed symbolism and evocative power.

Banaras at Tao Art Gallery,Worli,till April 12