Of subtle shades and buoyant colours

Leisure Period by Samir Mazumder

Anadi Kumar Boyragi, Samir Mazumdar and Rafiqul Islam Chowdhry (Rony) were confident about their work. They brought in Bauls, gypsies, nature and urban life in their canvas and paper. The hues were mostly subtle and there was a lot of experimentation with tone and texture. The artists were out to express the feelings and aspirations rather than make the quick buck. While Anadi worked with acrylic on paper, Samir went in for strictly idyllic brush and ink work on white paper while, Rony, the youngest of them all, decided to experiment with oil, acrylic and mixed media. The results were remarkably good, taking into consideration the relative youth, and the limited experience and exposure of the artists. True the works did sometimes hark back to some of the well-known masters -- local and western ones -- but which artist does not sit at the teacher's feet to learn?

Anadi said that his paintings had buoyant colours as he wished to capture the happy rhythms of life. His Gypsy life had the flowers and fruits that we normally imagine gypsies to be living on. The idyllic burst of pinks, oranges and yellows, set off by the pristine white, were to bring in the bright moments in their romantic lives. The pearly blossoms on the heap of forgotten earth in Creation-1 was another of his acrylics, which sang with the joy of existence.

In Searching soul, Rony included a flower, a crescent moon, with the back of a beat-up vermilion streetcar, along with a reclining wooden ladder, and a crammed, stifling urban existence. The message was that there was beauty to be found even in the confused squalor of modern humdrum life with its mindless mechanisation. The semi-abstract presentation was more like some fragment of a hazy dream, with a melange of broken, assorted images. In Holy place one got the ambiance of a sacred place of worship. It had two human figures framed by an arch. Vertical and horizontal lines held the images together. This was like another dream sequence in simple gray and yellow. "I have some figurative work too like the one about the Baul with his ektara, the goddess in dol udshob (festival), and the old man in meditation," Rony said.

The pen and brush creations, in black and white, by Samir were dramatic, daring and precise. They celebrated women from Bangladeshi villages. They had set themes like women at work or "mother and child". They brought in the visual beauty of our rural women, with their simple saris and adornment of trinkets.

The exhibit deserved the steady stream of gallery goers.