FREE FLOWING ART
With her unique style of painting, eminent film- maker Anu Malhotra forays into the world of art with her debut solo exhibition
What I create often surprises me too.... That is why I am unable to replicate my own work.
Anu Malhotra, known primarily for her many award- winning documentary films, has been painting for the last 15 years. And yet, September 2 will see the opening of her debut painting exhibition titled “Hue- Borne”. Anu strongly asserts that the “process of creation is as important as its result”. But when it comes to her works, perhaps, the process gains an unprecedented significance as that is what makes her works stand apart. Anu controls the flow of paint on her canvases not through a brush, but by the movement of the canvas itself.
She explains, “Though I am not guided by any strict rules while painting, one abiding technique is the way I allow colours to fall on the canvas. I pour paint on the empty surface and what emerges is a spontaneous, albeit layered, composition. I tilt the canvas to construct that composition, yet the angle, or pattern, of these tilts cannot be predicted, or replicated.”
Talking about what inspires her to paint, Anu says , “As a filmmaker, who has traversed the length and breadth of India and a fair amount abroad, the world, for me, is a kaleidoscope — a treasurehouse of images tumbling into each other, colours spilling, merging, fading, gushing into infinite forms, revealing the infinite possibilities of life.”
While her impetus is instinctive, yet there is an underlying balance and skill that she relies on while the colours flow into each other to form patterns and shapes. Talking about the challenges of painting in this way, she says, “I usually work on large canvases and have to complete each layer while the paints are still wet and flowing. Since the process can last upto 12- 14 hours at a stretch, it can be hugely intense and exhausting. A bout of painting over a few days can take me weeks to recover. Sometimes, when canvases don’t work out, I can get very irate; but when they do, it is exhilarating. However any which way, the process is always enjoyable.” Kishore Singh, the curator of the show, says that Anu’s work is not pure abstraction. “She likes to leave behind hints of what might have motivated her when she worked on a particular canvas. And this is harder to do than you imagine when you consider her technique of painting. Not that she is entirely averse to occasionally squeezing out paint along a charted trajectory to lend a suggestion of form. Is that a sunrise or a golden orb melting into its own colour? Is that a forest you spot? A universe underwater? In that truest sense, hers is an impressionistic palette. There are hints to what she might have created, clues that tease and beguile,” he says.
But Anu says that painting is not a conscious act for her and she thinks of herself as a cocreator where the spirit of a moment and the colours together comprise a creative production. “What I create often surprises me, too, as if the work had been wrenched out of me, a flow of imagination demanding expression through my hands. That is why I am unable to replicate my own work. Each work is unique, its own channel and its own master,” she adds.