Autobio-"audio"-graphy (organized by Kala Samay and Chavi Samvad)

 Few days back i was invited to talk about myself and my own journey and its various milestones in between and how life took its twists and turns. This was about an hour long session with approx half hour  of my monologue. The rest half i devoted to the question and answer sessions. They have recorded the session hopefully some clips were aired too. I have requested  to get some clips for uploading on net. 

An observation of one of the person  (Mr Devilal Patidar) was that in my paintings the surface becomes a very important part of the the painting. .. he had observed that I paid particular attention to developing the surface texture of the painting. Of course it is true to a major extent. 

With landscapes  most of my paintings have a 3D surface because of using thick impasto with knife and then working over it with colour. There are a few horses and ganesh that i have done in that manner . I do  pay particular attention, to the way the painting surface develops. I like to have finesse in my work. blending tones into one another and thats what i enjoy doing. 

1975 year of Jugalbandi of Painting with Prose

In the year 1975 a friend of mine thought about having a jugalbandi of  Poetry  and  Paintings  

The result was paintings based on poetry by Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh's poetry 'Andhere Mein ' . The reason this poet was picked was that the pictorial aspect of his verses was very prominent  (as also evident in lines below). The full text is available in KavitaKosh here

बाहर शहर के, पहाड़ी के उस पार, तालाब...

अँधेरा सब ओर,

निस्तब्ध जल,

पर, भीतर से उभरती है सहसा

सलिल के तम-श्याम शीशे में कोई श्वेत आकृति

कुहरीला कोई बड़ा चेहरा फैल जाता है

और मुसकाता है,

पहचान बताता है,

किन्तु, मैं हतप्रभ,

नहीं वह समझ में आता।

One sample painting (this is a scanned B/W image - the best i could manage )

There is also a writeup based on my limited understanding during those times. and a much youthful me :)  

Note: Later I also worked on poetry by Shamsher. but that may be some other time.  

Brushing my blog

There were countless things that happened in past 6 months. Some of them related to art (Like getting the veteran artist award from AIFACS in New Delhi) to Art camp in Ujjain and few more some such event. Its unfortunate that i was not able to post stuff and got totally carried away in the flux of daily hum-drum.  There is one thing I know for sure. Blogging should be  like brushing your teeth. (Everyday). 


So lets quickly put the  past behind and move forward. 

Sometime back there was a disscussion about  Artists should/should not represent their times. Afterall how would you find them contemporary if they do not do that. Think of the caves of Bhimbetka  they do tell a story. or do look at Guernica by Picasso

I think there are artists who are like that but I do not  find my paintings having any semblance to the present times, they seem to belong to another category. I find the inscape of timelessness more alluring than the landscape of present times.


 A few lines I have wrote in my diary would like to share.

अनंत फैलाव के साथ रहना
अंदर और बाहर भी
एक आदत सी हो गयी है

जीवन में शुमार है पूरी तरह से

शरीर तो नश्वर है
और में चिर दूरस्थ गामी
अपनी क्रातियो में हमेशा रहूँगा

मेरी क्रातियाँ क्या पाती हैं
इससे महत्वपूर्णा यह है की
मैं अपने आपको को कृतियों में
नये नये रूपों में पाता हूँ

एक ही जीवन में विभिन्न फलकों पर
अनेकों जीवन जीना प्रफुल्लित करता है

On a happy note:  my youngest son (Yatin) will be getting married sometime soon (hopefully this year), Everybody in family is quite cheerful. and as expected my younger son's phone bill is sky rocketing :)  

Bharat Bhawan Bhopal, Last day at exhibition

Thanks to Bharat Bharat Bhawan for organizing this wonderful exhibition of my works and giving me a chance to meet so many people.

The one month exhibition has come to an end. All the while time has flied. Especially since I had an 

almost parallel exhibition in Delhi as well. 

Location : Bharat Bhawan, Bhopal
Date : 13 Mar 2010
Occasion: Last day of 1 month exhibition. 




From Left to Right 

Myself- Suresh choudhary, Rahim Gutti, Suhas Nimbalkar and Sachida Nagdev 

Exhibition in New Delhi

Dhoomimal Art Centre in Delhi (Connaught Place)

The present exhibition is already underway in Bhopal till next month 13th , a totally  new set of my works will be on display in Delhi from 5th March.

Dhoomimal Art Centre will be hosting this exhibition. My Profile in their website is here
Have sent the box of works yesterday and its a big relief now that the ball is out of my court.


5 march 2010 - 6 30 pm - Just like with past exhibition This exhibition is also open for online viewing.
                                         Just click here http://sureshchoudhary.com/_img/   


For those who can physically visit here is the address 

Dhoomimal Art Centre, 

8A Connaught Place, 

Inner Circle, New Delhi-110001

Date : 5th March 2010- 17th March (Sunday Closed)

Thanks for the support. 
-S

online exhibition

A lot of you have received the URL for viewing online exhibition.

http://sureshchoudhary.com/_img/

Unfortunately there is some minor hiccup wherein a lot of text error seems to be generated. (debug mode)

Right people are looking into the issue and they should be able to correct it asap. This is our first attempt to have an online exhbition as well. SO please bear with us.

I will update the blog as soon as it is up and running.

-----------------------
11:10 pm 14th Feb - The images are being reuploaded.
------------------------
3 PM IST 15th Feb - Images are uploaded.

                                       The images are uploaded in picasaweb as well. If the initial link gives problem you can try the secondry source by clicking here

Pls let me know in comments if still any issues.

Exhibition in Bharat Bhavan Feb 2010

This is my first post of 2010 so Happy New Year folks.....  and some news from my end.

I have been invited by Bharat Bhavan to conduct an exhibition of my works on their 28th Anniversary. It feels good to be appreciated. This exhibition will start on 13th of Feb and will be on display for 1 whole month.

Bharat Bhavan is an independent trust created by the Legislature of the State of Madhya Pradesh. The Building architecture was conceptualized by Charles Correa. Bharat Bhavan is home to a lot of activities around  not just limiting itself to Art it including Music and performing arts as well.

You can know more about Bharat Bhavan on wikipedia here or on its own site.

I would consider the emergence of Bharat Bhavan to be synonymous.with the development of Indian art in the international market.

Presently I am busy tying a lot of loose ends It is a HUGE space that is available for display. and I will need to gather my works from around different places. I have  yet to decide on theme and  what to showcase.

Will keep you Posted  ...

Recent Abstract works - Poetry in color

                 जाओ और कह दो;

अब में तस्वीरें अक्स के

                       बहुत दूर चला आया हूँ.

उड़ते रंगों को सहेजकर,

                    मौसम तलाश करता हूँ.

पेशानी की लकीरें;

                   बिखेरा करता हूँ,

This is one of the recent abstract work (poetry in colour series),  Which  prompted me to write these lines

PS : Compare this work with the other Poetry in color series works there is a marked shift in my color pallet.

Small Writeup in hindi

दरदरी जमी पर,

अनगढ़ सी खीच दी है,

एक लकीर,

जैसे

रिश्ता बनाकर चला आया हूँ

कॅन्वस पर.

छीताराते हुए रंग

सहेजने के चक्कर में,

और बिखर गये हैं.

क्या यही है तस्वीर मेरी?

जाओ और कह दो;

अब में तस्वीरें अक्स के

 बहुत दूर चला आया हूँ.

उड़ते रंगों को सहेजकर,

मौसम तलाश करता हूँ.

पेशानी की लकीरें;

 बिखेरा करता हूँ,

तकदीर भुलाने के लिए.

बमुश्किल बिकती है तस्वीर कोई;

रसूले-पाक ने क्या किस्मत दी है,

भूंखे तो नहीं मरता हूँ.

बस रंगों को बिखेरा करता हूँ,

और तन्हाई बयान करता हूँ.

ज़ख़्मों को तारपीन और वार्निश से नुमाया करता हूँ.

                                                         - सुरेश चौधरी (९ जन १०, भोपाल )

An offbeat work from my private collection.

An offbeat work of mine that i love. (its in my private collection) There are very few I remember that explore man-woman-animal relationship. It was done in 1990

One more year of Bhopal Gas Tragedy - 25th year this time

One more year of Gas tragedy has elapsed. and this time we will be having its 25th Year.

It pains to even remember those moments. As I mentioned in my earlier posts here. It has been horrible. Just imagine that the people still have not got what was due to them.

As I mentioned in my earlier posts about my writeup. I wanted to put a decently typed version for all of my readers. Unfortunately, most typists of Bhopal only have English Keyboards. Eventually I did fish a guy in Old City who did type it for me and took print outs. (God bless him) . But before he could give me the soft copy his computer went down with Virus. Even second day he was unable to recover his data and that soft copy. Hence Just posting the pics of those printouts for those interested in reading my personal experience of those days in Hindi. (Its english translation will take some time to come) .

Although my medium is colors and not text still I am hopeful you are able to appreciate the hindi version . Attached here (6MB - 3 pics )

Studio at present

Big Black and Whilte canvas at the right hand was hanging in my drawing room since quite long time. Felt like making a few more works on the theme.

Do you notice that there is a tiny speck of red on that black and white painting.

Last time I was sitting with an astrologer he mentioned my Kundali has something that points to this behavior. India is incredible. People fish out relationships from strange places.

Perhaps its men's quest to find meaning in everything. otherwise how do you explain my behavior. I just can not finish a painting which does not have at least a tiny speck of RED in it.

Meetup on 13th Nov at my Studio

Yesterday had invited a group of artists to my studio to showcase my works. I sincerely hope to make it a yearly event.

Bhopal has really matured in all these years as an Art hub. At least now its not very difficult to find serious creative artists. Something that was very difficult say before Bharat Bhawan put Bhopal on the art map for India.

I believe I have refused to be a slave to style. and have experimented with various techniques. Size has never been a hinderance So you will find a small 12x8 inch work along side a few huge 72x 108.

Ganesha , Horses, Wave, poetry in Colour and Landscapes are already what you might be familier with, Of all these works which are not in the website are Benares Series, which is very close to my heart

Horses on the run ..

have been working on a few horses. Here is a work in progress.

Bhopal Gas Tragedy - an old writeup

Those who know India might be aware that Diwali/Dussehra is the time of the year when we do a thorough cleanup of entire home.. Its a messy affair so lets get straight to point.

I found an old writeup while doing the yearly cleanup. This should be around the some time after the Bhopal gas disaster. I still remember the melancholy hidden in every stroke. Reading it, felt bittersweet.

The write up (in my mother tongue - Hindi is definately better) contains the similar thoughts i had crudely translated in my older post (dec2 2008). Do follow the link if you want to see the paintings that ensued.

Windmills

(click on photograph to enjoy the high res image)

It was raining cats and dogs while travelling via Dewas from Indore to Bhopal.

The windmills were shrouded in rain clouds and an atmosphere like above ensued.

Returned from Trip to Pune and Nasik

Just returned from my trip from Pune and Triyambhakeshwar. Nashik.
A memorable trip. Nature and the Landscapes were as if coming alive for/from my paintings.

A fallen tree was like a giant sculpture.

My Yesterday

Yesterday was Makar Sankranti as well as Sakat Chouth

Sakat Chouth and makar sankranti means 2 kind of Khichdis (white/yelllow) the taste is magically superior compared to any other day. Also lot of Til Gud. It was also my grad daughters birthday. Simply marvelous stuff.

So many things to celebrate so little time. Thats how is India.

ArtScape- India Art Gallery

ArtScapes, show of India Art Gallery has begin - on till 15 Jan 09.

These guys are really doing some amazing work to promote Indian Artists. The 'thing' I like is that they provide such a eclectica of works that their exhibition are really a feast for the eyes. They have a mix of figurative as well as abstract art. Sculptures as well. I guess their gallery space should be one of the largest in Maharastra replete with fabulous lighting arrangement. Recently they did an exhibition of works by Shantiniketan artists.

One of my Horse trio is on display in Pune at IndiaArt Gallery.

A work I earlier blogged about here and here has appeared on the brochure as well. Unfortunately, due to some issues it was not framed.



There is no substitute to visiting the gallery in person at

Indiaart Gallery
At Kala Chhaya,
270/D, Patrakar Nagar Road,
Opp. Vikhe Patil School,
Off Senapati Bapat Road,
Pune 411016
India

However they have also kept an online show here

Enjoy :)

Bhopal Gas Tragedy

Since past few days, Mumbai tragedy had been a nightmare.God bless those who were victims of it. However 2nd of December reminds me of one tragedy that I was victim myself.

I remember distinctly,I was just back home after my bypass surgery. The nightmare i was seeing would just not end.
People on the street all short of breath, having eyes full of watery discharge, Screaming,trampling over each other.

I had woke up to a pungent smell something similar to the smell of red dry chillies on hot oil. My eyes were continously having a discharge and No matter how deep i breath it always felt short. When I looked around, everyone was in a similar state. Very soon heard someone screeming "Jahrili Gas, Maroge Sab" (poisonous gas all will die).

Fortunately we were among those who survived. OVer the coming weeks the death toll mounted up. Even after months .. everything living continued to die. Just like that.Even today I can feel the anguish and the tragedy that struck us.

Shortly after the Bhopal Gas Tragedy There were a few works that I did to take that pain and anguish out of me.

(We were fortunate to have a Hill nearby which we climbed. With higher altitude the gas thinned out. But not many of my city dwellers were this lucky. )