Excitement of hidden realities : By Swapan Mullick

Very few artists of her generation evoke the kind of freedom that bursts out of Swagata Bose’s canvases each time she is ready with a new set of ideas. Those who marvelled at her celebration of the female form in La Venus in a series that had a striking blend of beauty and boisterous imagination may have later wondered how she could delve into myth and come up with delightful images of Raavan that seemed to break the barriers of time and space. The truth is that the painter from the Delhi College of Art has never allowed her work to be circumscribed by the contours of conventionalism.

 Her Raavans produce a flurry of ideas that extend from the daring excesses of legend to ominous implications for the contemporary milieu while her Venus is a 21st century reality embracing a magical blend of sensuousness and sheer power. But then one may go on to find the artist submerged in the mysterious wealth of Mother Earth, capturing images by the sea, forms of simple fisherfolk superbly in sync with the majestic landscape. Or putting deft touches to bird forms that can only touch a heart that is sensitive and a mind that responds to the environment with an immaculate sense of detail. The mind of the artist never rests or relies on well established principles but inevitably looks for the reality beyond.

Swagata is not as interested in the destruction of forms as she is in exploring the possibilities of lines and shapes, colours and contours, emotions and enigmas that keep the viewer guessing on the hidden narratives. There may or may not be stories told in the conventional sense but what emerges is a sense of drama in her bold brush strokes and random assimilation of multi-media ideas. The early miniatures stand in striking contrast to the massive images in acrylic, conti and charcoal. She is equally comfortable with visuals that find her human subjects yearning for freedom or lend an artistic dimension to everyday realities. In any case, the artist is invariably out of a comfort zone because that is where the excitement of her work lies. In an amazingly short span of time, she has discovered the thrill of looking for fresh insights without engaging in unmanageable distortions or wild experiments. This style is reinforced with a delicate interplay of light and shade, a tender intermingling of colours and juxtapositions that tease the mind with complex interpretations of truth.

All this is evidently part of the inspiration derived from acknowledged masters to which Swagata has sought to add a personal vision. It comes through in a new series of portraits of leaders and icons whose work has had a deep influence on society as a whole. For the artist, it is also an opportunity to examine faces that speak through a flood of silent expressions. Whether it is a national leader or creative artist, a social icon or a popular hero, there are unmistakable stories hidden in meaningful profiles or in the sparkle of the eye. Swagata’s observation of the human experience is as insightful and interesting as her attention to detail in birds becoming a declining species because of threats to the environment. The documentation evident in the new show is real but with subjective touches that take the artist’s subjects to another level of multi-layered appreciation and speaks of an artistic restlessness on which she thrives. Experience of working in a varied environment has obviously contributed to the energy that makes Swagata turn from installations that cover sculpture, drawing and collage to a search for the ideal in the female form. The Nude that she has been presenting in her earlier shows is an object of mystery as much as the expressive images drawn from familiar faces with flood her new show. She also comes with the experience of an artist in residency in Manchester last year that has given her the exposure to sustain a universal sensibility as well as a modernism that has not touched the core of Indianness in her artistic response. Swagata’s images have connected her work to the environment with which she is familiar but which also draws the viewer into the excitement of hidden realities.