This set of postcard size watercolours were presented as an online solo exhibition by @anantartgallery in 2021
Somewhat safe, partially exposed,
We oscillate
Between peaks and lows
On balconies, terraces and
Strange spaces in-between.
We sit still while everything around us
Moves past.
A thought escapes into the landscape
Only to be stitched
Into the patchwork of emerging epics.
Here we are
Between how we were and how we will be
Doing, living, breathing and interacting
We stand with this space between us —
Walking talking moving Jaalis
Changing every pattern that we cast.
A Song in Asides
I had begun a few postcard size watercolours some years ago. These were paintings that were made as ‘asides’ while I was working on other paintings. They also travelled with me to different places, their small format providing a sense of endearment and reassurance that I could work anywhere or anytime while I was away from my studio. Those three or four paintings became strange companions— every once in a while, I would pull them out, look at them and think of what the next episode in their sequence would be. It was only in the later half of 2020 that I decided to continue working on them in a focused and consistent way.
The question for me was how one could build a narrative from sporadic ‘asides’ or that which is excluded out of the mainstream— what would it reveal if it were developed further? The small format also made me think of each painting like a line in a poem, which can hold meaning both in isolation as well as in the context of a stanza. The trigger for each piece could be myriad, ranging from poetry and literature that I read, or a cinematic frame, to lived everyday experiences. More often, it is the work itself that leads me to improvise with the human figure, pattern and landscape to create these episodic narratives.
Although I have always enjoyed working in small formats, the circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic has reinstated my belief in the impact of all things small. Interpreted in the context of social, economic, political and ecological hierarchies, we are left to introspect on the role of the individual, the collective; and the considerable impact of individual isolation or selective grouping on every living ecosystem.
Malavika
Vadodara, 2021
Malavika Rajnarayan 