Musings of two minds

At Durbar Hall in Kochi, Kerala, N.B. Lathadevi and her student Nimisha Rao are busy interacting with visitors who have come to see their exhibition Maya Rtuvarna. It has been Nimisha’s dream to do a show with her teacher. “I have been her student since childhood. Even though I moved to Vadodara from Thrissur after marriage, I continued my studies through the internet,” says Nimisha. “She was adamant that she should do a show with me,” smiles Lathadevi, who also hails from Thrissur.

As the title suggests, the exhibition has two parts — Maya, which includes Nimisha’s abstract paintings, and Rtuvarna, which comprises Lathadevi’s paintings based on six Indian seasons.

The season Greeshma (summer), where yellow is the prominent colour, marks the beginning of the series. “Each season has six paintings and I have adopted the ‘dots and waves’ style,” says Lathadevi. In the sixth painting begins the next season. For instance, the last painting in the Greeshma series is a mix of yellow and green, denoting the end of summer and the advent of Varsha (monsoon). Blue, violet, red and orange have been used to signify Sarat (autumn), Hemanth (winter), Sisir (cool season) and Vasant (spring) respectively. “Colours of vibgyor have been used for the series.”

Take a closer look, one could find dots forming shapes of nature, humans, architecture, animals and birds in Lathadevi’s paintings. Her paintings speak volumes about the lifestyle changes that accompany each season. “I did each series during the respective season, absorbing the mood of that particular period. If summer is a time of harmony, monsoon is more about loneliness and longing. Winter evokes a desire of being together and spring is the season of festivals,” she says.

From a romantic angle, her works could be interpreted as the earth, a female attracting the sky, a male, and giving birth to new lives. “It is when earth attracts sky that rain falls. We sow seeds in the fields then and the seeds get ripe in the autumn,” she explains the progression of her 37 paintings. Her final painting in the series is a blend of all seasons, like a mediation.

Nimisha’s first few paintings depicting the moods of nature could be read as an outcome of this fusion of seasons. “Observe nature, you can see its forms change with time,” she says. Done using watercolour and acrylic, elephant is a recurring element in her works. There is an ‘elephant with mahout’, ‘a herd of elephants rescuing a baby elephant’ and the likes.

A fusion of realism and abstract, she has also brought summer fun of children, goddesses and a heritage building in Baroda onto the canvas. A highlight of Maya is the set of paintings Nimisha did taking cues from Ravi Varma paintings. “I painted them as part of a show held at Kilimanoor Palace on his birth anniversary. I could do them sitting at Chitrasala, where he did his paintings. It was such an honour,” Nimisha recalls.

Characters and instances such as Jatayu vadh, Radha Krishna, Urvashi, the milkmaid and Hamsa Damayanti that made Varma famous have been recreated here. She didn’t replicate his works, instead improvised, choosing certain elements. For instance, she has taken hamsa from the Hamsa Damayanti painting. “Because, I find hamsa to be more important,” she says.

The interesting part is that her characters are faceless. “It is because the situations that most of these characters have confronted are relevant even at this age,” she sums up.