My Art

Dr. Awadhesh Misra

Colours of Celebration

Beneath layers and layers of age old seriousness, there is always present, a jumping jack boy overshadowed and pressed but reflecting innocence, joy and bliss. For my sensibility and reflection I attach myself with that naughty mischievous boy in me. 

That childhood memory of rains, cloud filled sky-some time beating a fast rhythm torrentially on roof tops, gleam of rainbow, lusty peacock dance and paper boat floating, tune me again and again and reflect on canvas. Water logged village of mine ‘Mathgovind’ [District- Ayodhya] looked like an island during those days. 

The childhood memory of misty winter nights that was nastily biting, specially while watering the wheat crop in village, marriage and other festivities and their detailed sacramental preparations create a tingling tone in my colours. The childhood plays of Sher Dandiya, Aais-Pais [chhupa-chhupi], Kite Flying, Paper Firkee [Paper wheel], Paper Plane swirling and mischief of stealing fruits from other’s garden, all this revives the boy in me and village life spent back. It gives me immense inspiration and colour dictum which I expand and express through my strokes, lines and soft tonal gradations. That hope, joy, celebration and bright coloured emotions relate me to my village. 

The creative process is an impulsive act and this impulse is interwoven with multi-threaded realization received through positive experiencing. Presently geometrical forms find a main blush in my creations.     

The experimental self in an artist is an iconoclast that breaks the barriers such as forms surpass their identifying limits and create the abstraction. This abstraction is substantial and moved by the urge of lucid expression- the expression of experience. During my study of Art (BFA & MFA) at Banaras, I came intimately close to the great musicians and artists where couplets and songs of  Kabira, the Tantrik and devotional fragrance of many-many hermits (Sadhkas) were blessed in the air. This reflects itself in my colour scheme of browns, yellows and reds.

The positivism is akin to negativism as love is akin to hatred. So I have painted some of my canvases half in black and half in colourful renderings.

The coarseness of natural forms enact itself as texture in my works. They are not refined and finished, so they portray life. The bold brush strokes that can be seen separately, bear a special trait that often look like texture. Tonal gradation creates a poetic effect and among many straight lines a curved dancing line creates music.

Since 2007, Vizooka (Scare Crow) used to come on my canvas in various forms silently. It was a new journey of my career as an artist. Actually, as I have told earlier, that I spent my childhood in a village, which comprised of open fields, granaries, river, forest and deep burrowed dusty lanes itched by bullock carts. In this perspective, there was a Vizooka which protected crops and with this Vizooka I have various sequence of experiences. Sometimes it appeared as a beast or ghost signaling towards me with its wide open arms creating a shiver of fear in the dark of nights while sometimes like a joker. Sometimes it appeared that if I know all about the reality of that and thus it has no meanings whether it is stood erect there or not. But apart from this it was destined to protect our crops in silent dark nights. Thus Vizooka to me, have many lives such as of a joker, a protector, a pretext, a witness of time who counts the beats of passing time and smiles with content. I have written Vizooka, in my memory, in many roles. It is those memories that guide the brush and thick of colours over the canvas. So the politicians, who have changed the politics into a profession, the justice and the adjudication as well, which melts down by the heat of personal gains and familyism, and also the administrative network which is anti people and alike, all this is painted in a scornful way through this funny dialect of Vizooka.

Thus, Vizooka is such a base of my creations who is the seer of past, present and future and in the sense is a witness of time and also dreadful and fearful. That’s why sometimes it laughs at time and circumstances yet sometimes it indicates and sometimes it is full of vigour and zeal.

I prefer to paint joyfully the bliss, celebration, hope, vigour and festivity of life, that's why I use bright colours. I paint irrepressible motion that never stops (turns) back because time never turns. I want to paint life, vitality and fullness (material and spiritual) I don’t consider art as a medium to express disorderly depression. I paint and want to paint that right placing of life – life, the eternal. 

Awadhesh Misra

Mobile No – +919415022724, Email- misra.awadhesh@gmail.com, drawadheshmisra@gmail.com