Connected

I am happy. Very happy. Very, very... happy. I think there are millions of ways and reasons to be happy. But perhaps the simplest is to be connected to oneself.

catching up

Seems like it has been a long long time, since I visited my own blog. The arts in education.... that's what I am trying to understand, unravel, explore, and discover this year at Harvard. I was wondering what it might mean to just forget about this whole world of artists, art makers and all the rest of it, then just pick up a crayon/ box of paint imagining those days as kids when something colourful and glittery used to excite us and go ahead and experiment. I think as adults we get too disciplined in our disciplines to think beyond those boxes, to just wonder and share the excitement of being alive and having all those million opportunities around us.

Today is a sunny bright day at cambridge and that's enough reason to awaken to the nuances, depth, brightness and multiplicity of colours around me..... And I am working on a science based art project.... and I can tell you I have been excited, wondering and going crazy about the things I seemed to have missed out on in biology.... How the hell does a tiny cell become a human being?

Illustrators @ Katha

http://artists-at-katha.blogspot.com/

Conversations

As long and tedious as a train journey can get, it is an equal pleasure to travel across India and just watch colours, movements and conversations. A couple in conversation, with children playing around, a group of women in conversation, two men relaxing on the benches and catching up with the day's events; from across the train window you never hear a single word and yet those conversations make beautiful visuals. Just as you lean over the window and square in on a particular area, the train moves and the whole scene slowly transforms into a waving tree, the sudden colour of a flying bird and a sudden excitement fills the body and the mind...

When?

When did I learn to look and why?
How far did I learn to see and how much farther have I wandered?
Have I found rest in the seas and their vastness
or in the depth of the winds?
Have I looked deep enough into faces with a million stories?
Have I felt at one with the tiny stir of a new born leaf?

When did I learn to pause while I look and why?
How long do I pause and how silent am I?
When did this sorrow and this joy seep into me?
How long have I been looking?

When did the mountains stop growing!

When did the earth stop changing!

Wondering still!

Quite often I wonder at my obsession with visuals. It is a strange kind of obsession, almost negligible in its necessity and yet very pronounced in its impact. From cracked and textured walls that I notice while walking down streets to the brilliant blue of a kingfisher, visuals leave me with diverse stories. Some stories grow within me and transform my perceptions, some stories stay with me and delve into my silences. Sometimes I wonder how I would construct my world if I were visually impaired.

Infact music has left me searching for strange lands, deep within myself. What would I have visualised if I had never been able to hear. Very often i hunt for music that touches me most and in exchange I find lines, strokes, colours, words, illustrations, paintings , dancers. Then, when I hear a piece of music it has a whole new meaning, a whole new world. It has perhaps taken me a long while to figure out this whole sense of integration of the human body with life around it.

When one is aware of one world, another world awakens by itself and with each little gesture, the whole earth stirs...

Where I search for visuals, how strange! I always end up finding poetry...

The Little Prince

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Prince

http://www.lepetitprince.com/en/

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery is one of my all time favourites. Such a lovely inspiring story written in such a simple style! Also illustrated By Saint Exupery, each illustration takes you through a sensitive visual exercise. What are you feeling? Why do you want to know more about the little prince? How does he look? Who is the fox? How will the wheat fields look?... There is so much left to the visual imagination of the reader, that one slowly begins to cherish and savour the essence of many relationships. Great Book!

Mr.God! This is Anna!

Mr God This is anna! is a beautiful book and has soul touching illustrations. The four year old Anna and her conversations and innocence open you to new life. The illustrations exude a great trust for life and love flows through the book. A must read for both the words and the visuals. Anna is someone you learn to love and then she teaches you to love life.

Chinese Books - Dotting the Eyes on A Painted Dragon

http://www.chinesecultureonline.com/d:BA:Tradition-History/473.html

I picked up this book a few years back at an old book store. This story and its illustrations have filled my imagination since then. There are three stories in the book. This particular story of the dragons explores the role of the artist in infusing life into works of art. What is the essence of any painting? Why do we relate to strokes, forms, eyes and the whims of diverse characters. This book brings out many subtle emotions within the artist and the observer as the artist paints the marvellous dragons and slowly begins to dot the eyes on them.

Very similar to the Indian concept of UNMILANA - (the final step in the creation of Gods and Goddesses by painting their eyes and infusing life into their form), Dotting the eyes on a painted dragon takes us through the pain and passion of the artist and the contrast between the life and lifelessness of a painted work.

The illustrations capture the subtleties and moods and unusual perspectives bring alive the intensity of the story. The text is by Cang Yangqing and the illustrations are by Lu Fusheng.