Silent canvases

You have heard of the writer8217;s block. Shakespeare had it, so did Coleridge. It8217;s a crisis that afflicts artists as well. So what clogs up the creativity? 8220;To presume that an artist is always capable of churning out works is silly. A professional artist takes his work as seriously as a chartered accountant or architect. Sometimes, one finds that one cannot draw or paint and it is a traumatic experience,8221; says artist Sanjay Bhattacharyya. He speaks of instances when he has been unable to paint for long stretches. 8220;We are more sensitive than most people and the slightest of things affect us. But sometimes, it could be a really sensitive issue like when someone you think is artistically inferior to you gets more attention. It can be really upsetting,8221; reveals Bhattacharyya.

It wasn8217;t the lack of attention that troubled Seema Kohli. While going through the tumult of a divorce, the artist found herself scribbling desperately. 8220;I just felt so hopeless. I was scared that maybe I had lost it, that I won8217;t be able to paint anymore. It was terrible to live with that feeling for eight months,8221; recalls Kohli, who calls herself a regular painter. Kohli clawed back to normalcy by familiarising herself with her 8216;best friends8217;, her paints and canvas. 8220;I would go up to the terrace with a canvas and splash colour all over it. I didn8217;t have the heart to pick up a brush. I started using acrylic because I thought a different medium would help me break through the depression. I moved out to a new place, started doing washes at home and in the midst of all that madness, I didn8217;t realise that I was coming up with something new. I went back to all those scribbles and transferred them on to the canvas. When I saw the effect, all my confusion just melted away.8221;

Anju Dodiya has what she calls a six-month fertility cycle8212;where she paints non-stop for six months and then faces a huge block. 8220;It8217;s a very painful two to three months where I have to suffer the feeling of being drained out, emptied8230;almost like I will never paint again,8221; says the artist who has come to be regarded as one of India8217;s leading female artists. Since a lot of her work is autobiographical, many of Dodiya8217;s paintings are about the angst of not being able to paint. We see her wrestling with her twin self, pinning down those inner demons till she clears the cobwebs of her mind. 8220;Of course I use that period to read, to sometimes clean my home and studio, travel and refresh myself. Like Akbar Padamsee once said to me, 8216;An artist has two functions, one is to gather input and the other to deliver output.8217; The only way to work it out for me is to turn inwards till the cycle completes itself.8221;

For mixed media artist Tushar Joag, it was ideology that kept him away from his brushes. 8220;While I was concentrating on forming the artist collective 8216;Open Circle8217; with my spouse Sharmila Samant and fellow artists Shipla Gupta and Archana Hande, I found I could not work. I had somehow lost faith in the business of art and had to find a new way to address my work,8221; says Joag, who took a four-year sabbatical from working as a sculptor, painter and video artist.

In 2006, though he came back with a bang, first by tentatively putting works into group shows. 8220;I have found a way to address my angst. But I find it almost impossible to be an artist and an activist at the same time.8221;
What possibly cures the block is the need to search, seek out old friends and paints, talk to each other and tell stories, some simple, some absurd. To give each other a language.