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The feminine abstraction
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The magic of watercolours is a journey of rediscovery
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Inside Shrishti Art Gallery you can rediscover the magic of watercolours that used to thrill the old masters. On show are 15 works of Anu Annam, a US-based artist, that show the feminine side of the world. Using a light palette and the off white tones of the canvas to good effect Anu brings alive faces of people be it a person called Viju Aunty or Stephanie. But they don't remain people, they morph into abstraction, speaking for everyone and perhaps their faces and colours communicating their moods. Included in the show are two self-portraits. While one of them shows the artist, as she would like to see herself, the other is a different mood portrait with the lighter tones trying to take away the meaning. The distortions of colours and the tones transform an almost perfect face into an abstraction of pain.
It is this play of watercolours that help Anu create magic. Water colours on the verge of dissipating into nothingness or losing their meaning. It is as if the artist has applied a daub of coloured water on a canvas and waited for it to dry leaving a hint of colour in the middle and a darker shade in the rim. Anu Annam says as much in a statement: "Watercolour can lend itself to abstraction through possible errors such as the spontaneous pooling of water during wet-on-to-wet technique. Both pooling and staining might be considered mistakes, but I view them as avenues for unexpected invention in my paintings."
Not surprisingly, Anu Annam doesn't go through the draughtsmanship route to get to her end product. "I felt that watercolour as a medium and the subject of human personalities are inextricable. Both are immutable as well as capricious. Both can be hauntingly expressive." True to her statement, Anu Annam's clutch of paintings show the feminine side in all its hues.
SERISH NANISETTI
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