For beauty’s sake
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This art gallery nestled in a small town, transcends location. G.B.S.N.P. Varma
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On canvas From the art gallery’s collection.
In the auburn glow, fibres stick out from the pores of the skin and seamlessly stream into the surroundings, effacing the border between the body and the environment, dissolving into web of life.
For ex-serviceman K. Naga Bhaskar Reddy, art is both life and a source of living. The 43-year-old former employee of the security wing of Air Force invested whatever money he received after superannuating from the service in Naa Bha, an art gallery he created in the first floor of his house at Tanuku in West Godavari district.
“Art transforms us. It is not ivory-tower stuff. It is how you search for beauty in the minutest details of everyday life,” he says. He started the gallery ‘to provide access to and to create awareness about art among the common man and to encourage latent talent in people around him.’ Convinced that man is a born artist, he chose to share his oeuvre with the public. Reddy has hosted a series of exhibitions since 2001. The gallery is ‘a rare and rather a bold attempt to create an oasis of art,’ according to Uma Shankar Ch., a Hyderabad-based sculptor.
Teaching himself the basics of painting through rigorous craftsmanship, Reddy embraced the art when he was a child. Inspired by the vibrant beauty around him, his yearning soul found a medium to reflect his myriad expressions on the canvas. “Our subject material is life,” he says philosophically. The artist approaches a painting with an intuitive grasp that prods him to explore the ‘dynamic tension between conception and execution.’ “It is the depth that determines the finish and the sophistication of a painting work. It takes doing to get the depth, to graft a 3D image onto a 2D plain surface of paper or canvas,” he explains.
For this self-taught artist, the very act of holding a brush and playing with colours is exhilarating. New ideas come from invisible source, he says fussing over a dot, a dab and a daub and adds: “You’ve got to make your choices as you go along.” There are occasions when he becomes a mute spectator to the unfolding mystery of his painting not only taking a definite shape but also exuding profound implications.
From the maelstrom of creative process, a sinewy shape emerges; a taut structural balance appears and a richly textured image blushes from the canvas even as he stands in silent adoration. “Working in the Air Force taught me discipline and maintenance of the same strain and rigour from beginning to the end. No slacking off in between,” he says.
Like the artist himself, the gallery is orderly. Dr. B.A. Reddy, founder of the Young Envoys International in Hyderabad, remarked: “The display is systematic and artistic.” The gallery has over 250 paintings on display. Light undulates across the rooms throwing a contrasting intensity on the framed paintings which come in many variations: Oil, watercolour, portraits, pastel, stomp work, clay work, knife work, driftwood articles, wood embossing, acrylics, antique-effect pieces, nib work, reproductions, pot paintings and collages.
As you wend your way through the rooms, you feel it’s an organic harmony, throbbing with the artist’s sheer imaginative fecundity and versatility. In addition, he conducts camps and workshops for artists. “People who visit this place have different tastes. I want each one of them to identify with their respective interests,” he says.
In the rooms each painting speaks to you from beyond the façade of form. “Beauty makes life worth living.”
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