So the palette knife has grown still. The furiously alive colours have been distilled into a meditative stillness. The chattering energy has found its centre. The need to react to stimuli has been replaced by the need to witness the ebb and flow of life and to observe the sunlight trickling from a web of leaves to meld into a stream. The need to say has given away to the need to be. Milind Nayak’s inner world is like a serene lotus pond but alive still with reflections of the golden sky, the shimmer of branches, the buzz of profundity.
He may have become a reductionist in technique who wants to stop and ponder and not chase every drop of light and colour but he is still tuned into abundance in all its manifestations. Now he wants to freeze-frame the moment when inspiration strikes him instead of stretching it. This moment then is bleached of all colour till only the essence of light, shadows, leaves, water and what can only be described as the breath of life remains.Nothing muddles the freshness or delicacy of the mood.
So we see a moment in time before it becomes an impression, before colours intrude and shapes become defined. Before the artist moves into a scene and makes it his own. Nayak’s artistic intervention is unobtrusive here and he is like the masterful creators of Oriental silk screens, whose signature is their ability to become one with their creations.
Nayak’s habitually burning oranges, pulsing yellows, restless reds give away to restful mauves, solid browns and blacks, a serene opal, baby pinks. He edits out non-essentials to focus on the keynotes of a composition. So we see a bunch of leaves ablaze with yellow light against an amorphous, neutral background. In another work, tree trunks become shadowy props while the minutiae of their leaves blur in and out of a mauve, powder blue, pale pink sky. In one frame, the light is the thing as it pours out from the sky to inhabit the heart of a cluster of many trees.
Shadows within a garden appear as if they have been painted with an X-Ray vision, their surfaces peeled and their assorted spirits revealed to us in all their glory. The water in a pond recedes to allow floating leaves and mobile shadows to have their say. A patch of sunshine on a stream becomes the only living, vivid thing in one particular work. In a modern interpretation of Monet’s lily ponds, wild browns of grass are soothed by the tranquil blues of a water body. Misty morning greys swathe and swaddle a new day. There are times when it is hard to distinguish between liquid reflections and solid shapes and what Nayak has achieved in this series is a confounding coming together of reality and perception, technology and art and most importantly, a self-effacing humility as well as a skill that animates each work with intuitiveness.
Says Milind,”I have been fascinated by the lotus flowers ever since my childhood. One of my duties during those days was to fetch milk from a neighbor’s house. On my way, there were lush paddy fields and a pond with lotus flowers blooming in it. I used to watch the pond intently and as I grew older, this became an obsession with me. My dream was answered when I moved into a tiny studio which had a lot of empty space around it.
I got a shovel and started digging out a hole in the ground, covered it with a black plastic sheet and filled water into it.” Friends gave him ferns for the pond but the greatest gift was a lotus plant and the pond was complete. Says Milind, “Soon the pond became a focus point where all my friends gathered. As the days passed, the plant started blooming and I discovered a lot of facts about the lotus. I would photograph them and this led to a formidable collection of photographs. It is from these photographs I drew the inspiration for this show. It is this realization of the dream along with photographs of other spaces I explored as a child that make up this exhibition.”
These works introspect instead of clamouring for our response and for that very reason, they hold our attention and keep it.
The Lotus Pond:A solo show of Milind Nayak’s latest works is at
Galerie de Arts
11th Floor Barton Centre
84 MG Road
Bangalore-560001
Ph:080 2559 1932/ Fax:080 2559 1933
Mob:98450 26543/93418 26543
Email:galeriedearts@gmail.com
Link:www.galeriedearts.com
Reema Moudgil is the author of Perfect Eight (http://www.flipkart.com/b/books/perfect-eight-reema-moudgil-book-9380032870?affid=unboxedwri )