“If you are lucky You will find Your path If you are luckier still, it will be paved with flowers And if you are Truly blessed It will lead You home ” These words accompany artist Prenita Dutt’s new solo exhibition of paintings “Jwala”, which, as the name suggests, is not a destructive fire albeit the life force — the fire within each one of us. It is also the nature force that has the potential to start from a seed and turn into a mighty tree.
And this force is clearly visible in Prenita’s paintings. Wild daisies blooming with cyan, blue and green backgrounds, a giant willow tree with a riot of colours, two long panels with lotuses, dragonflies ready to jump out of the huge canvas, wilderness, Fishtail flower, humming birds, cherry blossoms, etc depict an amazing amalgamation of nature and the abstract. “This show is different because it deals hugely with an internal process of magic that exists within all living things. This one reality binds us beautifully because the energy that sustains the mighty Oak and the smallest blade of grass, also flows through me”, says Prenita.
So why so much emphasis on nature “Nature is serene and sublime. To me, nature remains in harmony unless man interferes with it. It’s blooming, blossoming buds, birds, fireflies, all eco-exist,” Prenita says. And it is this quality that compelled her to channel “Jwala” into an exhibition. A menagerie of colours comes alive as Prenita experiments with a new technique and different mediums with a resultant 40 paintings depicting nature at its best. So there are “Old tree and new life”, “Happy life with Humming birds”, “Deep roots & New Life” and “Abundance”, all showing the artists’ love for nature.
One gets to see fiery orange, rusts and reds as if bursting into a volcanic eruption albeit tempered by effortless strokes lending an abstractness which makes these paintings easy on the eyes.
The mixing of mediums — photo colour mixed with acrylic paint and oil — is difficult to manage but Prenita seems to have perfected it on huge canvasses. Photo colour is extremely difficult to handle, especially since even a drop is enough to change the colour of a bucket full of water. To handle colours of such intensity, using a syringe of turpentine oil is commendable.
Unlike previous exhibitions, which had figurative works, Prenita’s current exhibition shows a conscious effort to include more landscapes and organic forms of nature. These paintings are in the company of quotations — also written by Prenita and taken from W.B. Yeats’ poems or from Alice Walker’s Color Purple — curated from random jottings, blogs and diary entries. In tandem with the paintings, the quotes elaborate on the many facets to the artist’s personality.
“Sunspots, sunshine Gloss and glow Filter in like Prisoners Escaping From imaginary Detention Playing with leaves And branches Like Long lost friends”
Prenita says: “Paintings are a way of setting free or rather pushing our imagination. Nature gives flight to my imagination.” And once her exhibition wraps up on September 16, she plans to go back to her art studio to another idea that’s already on her mind. Until then, sample this beautiful marriage of words and visual media which creates, as Prenita says, a “harmonious whole” in the mind of the beholder.
