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Journalism of Courage
Renuka Reddy is a seeker. When she’s not chasing sunlight, you will find her coaxing colours out of dyes or perfecting the wax outline of a design with needle precision. The textile revivalist is currently holding her first solo, “The Art of Hand Painted Chintz”, at Gallery Art Motif in Delhi, where 17 paintings in natural dyes emphasise her workmanship in kalamkari.
Chintz, an Indian trade textile in the 17th and 18th centuries, painted or printed, was exchanged for pepper and gold. “After I returned from the US, where I worked on automotive seating, I was keen on using my knowledge of textiles and leather design in a new way. I came across chintz and found how beautiful the textile is. I travelled to Srikalahasti and Machilipatnam, known for their chintz trade. But I found that the practice of certain techniques were lost. So I had to learn much on my own. In 2011, I started RedTree Textile Studio in Bangalore to research and develop chintz,” says the 42-year-old.
Reddy adds, “I focused on the textiles that went to the West. The English sent their designs to craftsmen in India but since they were unfamiliar with the flora and fauna of the West, they gave their interpretations to it. In my paintings too, you can’t identify the flowers and leaves. Reproducing these works gives me insight into the techniques that our craftsmen employed centuries ago.”
The delicate detailing and symmetry of the indigo leaves, the deep reds in the petals, and the gentle pinks as fillers in her paintings conceal the back-breaking work it involves. Her rigorous 30-step process includes bleaching the handwoven cotton cloth in sheep dung and sunlight multiple times; soaking it with myrobalan, a source of tannin, and buffalo milk; drawing outlines in wax; bathing the cloth in madder (red dye pigments); and treating it in alum mordant. “Every experiment tells me something. Dung and sunlight are still used to bleach cloth white, leaving the dyed areas untouched, while the fine art of drawing wax lines with a pen is still a mystery to me. How did they do it? It fascinates me,” she says.
But the challenges are endless. “If I change anything, I have to be careful. Recently, my red turned brown, and I figured it was because I had changed my water filter, and the dye was a few months old. The big challenge is how do you bleach with dung and sunlight and get the right colour. The fine tuning took me a year,” says Reddy.
