Colours convey it all
RANA SIDDIQUI
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Yasmin Sawhney's courage speaks through her paintings mounted in Delhi.
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STROKES OF STRENGTH Yasmin Sawhney and one of her creations mounted at the Academy of Fine Arts and Literature.
Success, they say, is the ability to rise above one's discomfiture. And this is what 50-year-old Yasmin Sawhney seemed to have realised soon after she developed degeneration of both the retinas that turned her colour blind some years ago.
With her sound knowledge of art and academics, Sawhney not only wrote hundreds of poems in English but also translated them into her paintings. What separates her works from others is her composition, colour and the theme selection. None of them has any element of nudity. Aesthetics apart, Sawhney's serigraph oil on canvas works, speak of hope.
A collection of her recent and old works `As the Soul Flies' concludes today at the Academy of Fine Arts and Literature. Most of these accompany her poems. In `Where is God' she says that God is not in the temples, mosques or gurdwaras, He is in the innocent children and old sceptics. In `Love' she says love is fleeting like "Blossom of May" as she says in her poem. Her `Modernity' is a personal experience on the road when once she asked her husband to take her around the city though she cannot bear the lights and colours. In this she laments that today's children don't venture out in the rain to enjoy themselves, but stick to electronic games, and so on.
Veils too
Among her very interesting collection are four sketches titled `Women in Veil'. They contain extremely beautiful women draping bordered dupattas on their heads. "I made these sketches when I had just started losing recognition of colours," she recalls. Still, the intricate borders of the dupattas in the paintings are noteworthy. "That glamour of veil is gone. I don't even find anyone answering you with a `ji'. We are bartering our cultural values for modernity," she rues.
States Sawhney, whose fourth solo show this is in Delhi, "If people think with a logical mind I call myself an aspiring soul. It takes me two months to blacken a canvas and then paint on it. I read the colours mentioned on my colour tubes to make them out. If there are, say, five shades of yellow, I make a guess to paint."
Sawhney is also a trained homeopath. She has also has done an advanced course in Ikebana and other flower arrangements from the Sogestu School in Delhi.
A self-taught artist and a postgraduate in English Literature from St. John's, Agra, Sawhney procured her knowledge of art from her library of ancient and modern books. "I feel really confused when some learned artists ask me to `form a style' to stay `in the market'. If I do that it will be forced creation," she says. Though she has her own complaints with the market too. "Why are sable hair brushes not sold now? It was the best brush. Now they shave the tail off so that no one is able to make such brushes."
Sawhney, who works with the help of a magnifying glass, also released a book of her poems, "As the Soul Flies", at the inauguration.
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