Painting : Kate Bowen
Imagine being here ‘Now’ is a title I offer for advance publication when I have no idea what I’ll talk about, but also because I enjoy the paradox. Why would we have to imagine a place if we are right here now? Because we’re always doing it because every day, we imagine and then live a version of our new stories, our histories, which we then disseminate through friends and families. ‘Imagine’, John Lenon exhorted us. And artist David Wojnarowicz said in the 1980s, “I’m beginning to think that one of the last frontiers for radical gestures in the imagination.”
Artist Kate Bowen : Paintings of Trees of Delhi
Trees & Environment Concern: Case of Delhi: Environmentalists worldwide are talking about the vital role of trees in the world’s ecosystems. Citizens of Delhi, the capital of India and one of the most polluted cities struggle against the narrative of ‘development’, which comprises the construction of a wide range of urban dwellings, broadening roads, flyovers, and much more. Each action presently seems unbalanced considering long-term sustainable factors, such that the holistic parameters of these ‘development’ initiatives seem more under-developed than developed. The pressure groups engaged in the narrative of pushing such ‘development’ seek to counter the voices of citizen groups and environmentalists. Within this framework, the recent work of Kate Bowen a British artist who created a series of paintings on Trees of Delhi is a fascinating artistic response to the critique. The paintings were part of a group exhibition at Sangeeta Gupta’s Prithvi Fine Art and Culture Centre, Delhi a few years ago.
Artist Kate Bowen was in Delhi some years ago and found herself amidst issues of air pollution and the cutting of large, old trees in Delhi. She witnessed protests by environmentalists and tree lovers. As an artist, her journey in India seems to have motivated her to dialogue with the Trees of Delhi – the silent but vulnerable citizens of Delhi. The drawings seemed to bring out the characters of her new friends, which she represented on Banana paper and painted with a squirrel brush. She journeyed to bring her modern training in conversation with the miniature painting style. Her paintings seem to highlight the minutely certain distinct character of each chosen tree represented. She tried to create in the portrait of each tree the personality which emerged in the manner distinct patterns of their branches, roots, the girth of their trunks, and the movement of leaves in the breeze seemed to catch the stirring emitted in their intangible voices.
Trees and Indian Miniatures:
Miniature painting found currency between the early 16th century and late 19th century from Rajasthan in the West, Punjab hills in the north to Deccan in the south. They stand out like jewels in a crown in the Indian painting tradition. It is known that trees and foliage in Indian miniatures were often added as decorative elements to enhance the mood of a chosen narrative. For example, the 12th-century poem Gita Govinda by poet Jaidev describes the love between Krishna and Radha. The poem inspired many painters from the ateliers of various medieval courts who promoted the Miniature Paintings genre. The poem mentions the dark Tamala trees under which several characters’ activities are described, and fundamentally, the trees are featured as an intrinsic part of the paintings. The trees in the miniature paintings served as geometric designs as much as they conveyed the mood of the central narrative. The trees also created spatial compartments so that a story flowed from one part to another in one painting. It was for this reason the miniature paintings produced a three-dimensional effect.
Bridging Genres: a modern painter, Kate Bowen entered the Miniature painting world by training with Delhi-based miniature painter – Banwari Lal Rajput. It was intriguing to see her paintings on the trees, representing how her modern art training dialogued with the new genre of miniature painting.
Banwari Lal Rajput
Negotiations: Line is rarely seen in nature but is heavily used in paintings. The lines are important in creating the designs as the basis of all work. The quality of the line work can greatly affect the final rendering. Miniature artists frequently use lines to delineate one shape from another or to bring out the form. Kate has used Lines to impart energy and dynamism to bring each tree’s character. The swirls of her squirrel brush seem to glide or to draw to capture designs of branches and roots. Sometimes, they seem delineated with simple, coarse lines, investing a rawness in the image.
Painting by Kate Bowen
Only in twentieth-century art did shapes start getting used as an end in themselves, as we see in Kandinsky’s work. In miniature paintings, all depictions are through realistic, representative shapes usually associated with the objects. Shapes can be rendered with shading, scale, and lines to bring out a three-dimensional form, or they can be rendered flat in a collage-like manner by using flat colour or delineating lines. There is an interplay of myriad small shapes of different tones, contrasting or painstakingly similar shapes, bringing about an amazingly energetic image. The use of shading provides hues, saturation, and brightness (or tonality). This technique is absolutely necessary to communicate a definite perception of the world.
Yet another technique Bowen applies and finds similarity with the miniature genre is a quest for texture. Her use of the banana paper enabled a fascinating dialogue between the hair of the squirrel brush and the magnetic pull of the crevices of the paper, which seems to capture, like a camera, the flow of paint, bringing out the raw texture of the trees. The appearance seemed to highlight the visual element that served as a stand-in for the qualities of another sense, touching. One could imagine the roughness of the roots, leaves, sharp bends, and curves of the branches.
Portraits of Trees Fighting to Survive as Citizens:
Finally, the question of Space. A miniature painter on his canvas must detail and maximize the poignancy of the chosen subject, narrative, character or setting. Each of Bowen’s paintings aspires to bring out the depth by depicting foreground, middle-ground and background uniquely. Using a bold naturalist voice, Bowen does not choose to create the tree’s setting but paints only The Tree, transforming the Citizen Trees as personalities by creating their Portraits. Each Citizen tree seeks to communicate a quality where the sense of space is embraced through the overlapping fighting figures of each body part of each tree. The body of each tree appears like a collage-like depiction of space, heightening the sense of tumult in the fighting action of trying to survive as a citizen in Delhi.
Conclusion:
The work on Trees of Delhi by Kate Bowen represents an exploration of the miniature painting genre from the perspective of twentieth-century design. Her style combines two different fields from two different contexts, giving rise to many interesting viewpoints at the points of intersection—the dynamism of lines, the volume afforded by the shapes, the sense of space, and the tactile quality, among many others.
However, what is important is the commentary through visual art to be the advocate voice of the silent Citizens who, for decades and centuries, have remained seminal companions and residents to other citizens. Can we save the Trees of Delhi?
Dance – Save Trees – Performer – Dr Navina Jafa
TRAVEL, DANCE, ART, CULTURAL HERITAGE OF INDIA - DR NAVINA JAFA 