Artist Bio : Ramlal Dhar

Sunday, March 12, 2000

AMONG contemporary artists, few have created landscapes with greater love and originality than French-educated, Calcutta-based painter Ramlal Dhar and his latest pictorial compositions may be seen as a comment on the inseparability of man and nature, each attributing a meaning to the other. What stands out in these compositions is the painter's remarkable ability to weave expressive human figures and varying manifestations of vegetal forms into an aesthetically meaningful relationship.

This world of pastoral beauty speaks of a spiritual bond between man and nature - of a dialogue between man's essential innocence and nature's mysticism. There is a becalmed silence in his art bathed in blues, yellows, greens, mauves and browns that leads to a distant place far removed from fear and friction where men and women simply love plants, leaves, flowers and the language of nature. With colour and brush strokes, he evokes an imaginary vision of earthly paradise.

Ramlal Dhar's works are reminiscent of his memories of Karimganj, his hometown in Assam, where he grew up as a child with an aesthetic sensibility. Each new season gave him a separate personality and mantle. In his approach to painting, he tried to forget the subject, and focus instead on colour, contrast and shape, and nomadically sought out intriguing rural sites to paint. His talent won him a scholarship from the Assam Government to study in the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Calcutta, where his paintings were inspired by a number of sources.

On receiving a national scholarship for mural painting, he moved close to the reputed artist Ganesh Haloi and spent some months working with him. He wanted to paint masterpieces that would mean something to people one day, and he took innovative lessons in portraiture, life study and landscape painting from another master - Atul Bose. "My figurative works have been influenced by Atul Bose's teachings. He always laid emphasis on maintaining the rhythm in the posture. The figure must always breathe, he used to say," Ramlal recalls. As a result most of the figures in this series are not static. Also the extensive use of dots in some of the works have rendered a dynamic character in them.

Though his early works were largely figurative, his years in France as a student of Ecole Nationale des Arts Decoratifs de Nice (1978-80) and as a learner of mural art (1978-84) shaped his theoretical ideas about the content of landscape. He was fascinated by the mercurial climate of France and though his artistic vision was still raw, he did not paint from nature so to speak, but created his own context with colours that he needed for his work. "Later, specialising in largescale murals both in India and France gave me the opportunity to depict nature in all its immensity and expressiveness as also directly interact with life-size human and animal forms in the flat surface of walls. And all through, my depictions featured the quiet co-existence of man and nature."

Technically, the paintings are well-structured and the artist's dexterity and hard work are apparent in every work. His lines evoke a Van Gogh-like flavour and sometimes one is reminded of Alfred Sisley where the normal eye sees only the external outline of objects. But Ramlal's impressionist eyes see the living lines, not put together geometrically but in a thousand irregular strokes which, when seen at a distance, establish life. Ramlal's forte is also his use of colour which brightens in electric blues and parrot greens rendering the fleeting impact that the surroundings make on us. He says: "The direct vision of nature often gets transformed into large colour areas of sombre hues with minute textures on the surface to create a palpability. While depicting portraitures too, which is another aspect I find interesting, the inherent innocence of man stands out against the backdrop of nature."

Ramlal Dhar's works are on display at Artworld Gallery, Chennai, and alongside his paintings are the landscapes of another rising artist from Bengal, his wife Sohini Dhar whose oils on canvas and dry pastels on black pastel paper are differently oriented as is evident from her innovative explorations of both the countryside as well as the urban scene.

She studied in Santiniketan "surrounded by the sights and sounds of nature" and after receiving her doctorate on "Landscapes in Indian Miniatures" at Viswabharati University, began painting with nature as the most stimulating factor in her work. The inherent sense of unity and harmony in nature spurred the creative impulse in her but when she took up a teaching job in Calcutta and began painting in the city, she wondered if a radical change in outlook would be needed along with the change of locale.

Residing in a metropolis with its population and concrete structures, the connotation of nature opened a new perspective for her. The infinite grandeur of nature appeared dwarfed in potted plants set on grilled balconies of houses, or within pruned gardens and fenced parks.

The destruction of nature by man and the worldwide ecological degradation also suffocated her artistic feelings and the desolation of the vegetal world was reflected in her works in which trees assumed burnt charcoal forms in black masses or a denuded tree stood atop a bright red hillock.

She says: "I do believe in the infinity of nature, but living in an urban set-up revealed its limitations within the city environment. Nature is being eroded every day by those who live in cities, and I express through my work, the helplessness of man in such a situation, envisaging the phenomenon of the coming days when there will be no green left on this earth."

She handles both the oil and pastel mediums with great finesse, and colours play a most vital role in her paintings. Juxtaposition of contrasting as well as similar tonal colour areas help her create and re-create her feelings and sensibilities. She studied extensively the miniatures of India and what struck her most about these paintings was the artists' fondness for colour, and this revelation led her to new spheres of realisation and altered her way of seeing.

"Often, therefore, my urban settings appear with vibrant spectrums of cadmium, carmine, ochre or brown, in sharp space divisions, while I seem to be subconsciously banishing green from city dwellings, whereas in the vast yet intimate landscapes with piled-up rocks and clusters of trees, the sombre hues of grey, pale green and rust try to capture the feeling of ethereal tranquillity."

Ramlal Dhar, born 1953, has travelled and shown nationally and internationally and his works are in various important collections in India and abroad.

Sohini, ten years younger, has been awarded several scholarships and grants, and taken part in major exhibitions, seminars and workshops in the country. Both of them are art teachers of repute, and Sohini, in addition, is involved in research and writing.

ANJALI SIRCAR