Song of Colours on Canvas enthrals

Indians are associated with colour, brighter the better.

Chromaticity plays a major role in their daily lives, from costumes and cuisine to festivals, lifting the human spirit and personifying taste and preference.

Such resplendence also forms the essence of the art form, ranging from classical dances to paintings on the canvas.

Colours form the main theme of the forthcoming exhibition of Laxmi Jhunjhnuwala, a painter of great talent and a pride of the community.

Rangkavita- Song of Colours, will be a display of her works, due to be held at the Mairangi Arts Centre, located at (20 Hastings Road) Mairangi Bay from June 8 to 22, with the opening night expected to attract a number of dignitaries, fellow artists and critics.

The event, her first Solo Show in a Gallery, would feature up to 20 works of Laxmi. Among them would be ‘On Mind and its Control’ (1000 mm X 1520 mm), ‘Untitled’ (1200 mm X 1200 mm). Both are 2011 paintings on canvas.

“I have heard many from the Westerners saying that their world is rather grey and that Indians wear, enjoy and celebrate colour. It overflows in every aspect of our lives, generating a mood of festivity,” she said.

Life of hues

The artist in Laxmi has made her life and those of her husband Sudesh, their daughters Tulika, Kanika and Vedika and their beautiful home in Central Auckland radiate with colours.

In her own words, “The bold vibrant colour fills the environment with joy and happiness and generates positive aura, the purity of which transcends all limits. It has no beginning or end, edges or boundaries.”

To illustrate the concept, she quoted American author Richard David Bach, who wrote in his all-time bestseller Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”

Years later, Management Guru Stephen Covey said, “Change was the only thing constant in this world.”

There is a high level of quality, talent and even philosophy in Laxmi’s paintings lifting the human mind and spirit.

“Absoluteness is an impossible feat; for, even humankind and the life around us have evolved through time. Transformation can occur gradually or abruptly, but it is a process that is constant in our world,” she said.

Freedom to explore

As an artist, she is beyond the control over creative events, but she is a keen participant, creating conditions and letting events take their course.

“The pigment or paint is free to perform according to its free will. It moves and sits according to their material qualities making the final image, allowing viewers to have an experiential encounter with the work,” she said.

Three years ago, Laxmi told us that she aimed to explore, expose and extol formal relationships and a “dialogue between space and architecture creating a spatial experience.”

Experimentation, creating works using walls, floors, ceilings, and three-dimensional aspects of space are among the subjects that appeal to her.

“I want to add new depth and dimension to familiar spaces. I utilise different shapes, pigment and colour, which extends onto the floor and ceiling. They create an illusion and play to become both two and three-dimensional.”

Laxmi hopes that her forthcoming Show would make the words of 19^th Century Painter Arthur Jerome Eddy come true: “Pure art speaks from soul to soul. It is not dependent upon one use of objectives and creative forms.”

According to her, the simplicity in the work leaves it open to interpretation and is more powerful than a direct message. The work reflects the concepts of Eastern mythology and Western modern concepts.