Drawn to Life

Drawings of Fantasy

Black felt pen 17.8 x 17.8 cm 1999

Ina Puri

Every great drawing—even if it is of a hand or the back of a torso, forms perceived thousands of times before—is like the map of a newly discovered island. Only it is far easier to read a drawing than a map; in front of a drawing it is the five senses that make a surveyor…. And this scale is then filled with the potentiality of every degree of hardness, yieldingness, force of movement, activeness, and passiveness that you have ever buried your head in or knocked it against. John Berger

The ra ys of the sun streaming in were blocked out, and in the pitch-dark caves, the frescoes on the walls were aglow with an intensity that was almost celestial. The figure of Buddha in meditation loomed large eyes closed, fingers delicately composed in mudras. A hush fell over the gathering as the artists almost reverentially took in the spectacle of the magnificent friezes on the Dunhuang cave walls. The spell was broken when the group spilled out into the sunlit area fronting the caves and wandered off in different directions to explore the heritage site. All but one. Rini Dhumal stayed back, her sketchbook clutched in her hands as she scribbled away furiously, capturing the images before they faded from her mind. It had been reassuring within the darkness—the serene Buddha so intensely present before them, but the gentle expression was already ebbing. She knew well how fickle the ways of seeing were, how easy it was to forget! The composition of Buddha, with a thousand alms-bowls arranged in a semi-circular curve around the seated figure, and the sun and the moon in distant heavens, had mesmerized her. She wanted to remember always the intricate way in which the two dragons had twisted their lashing tails beneath Buddha’s lotus throne. She had to sketch her observations immediately…lest she should forget the blue of the sea and the deep crimson of the lotus blossoms. And so her fingers flew over the blank pages, filling them with images of the Jataka tales, the apsaras and Buddha.

Rini Dhumal traces her tryst with drawing, back to her early girlhood when she spent long summer holidays at her grandfather’s ancestral home, a rambling mansion in Itakumari, now in Bangladesh. While her other siblings busied themselves elsewhere and her twin brother sat patiently by the pond waiting for the fish to bite, Rini wandered around the vast house. She befriended the elderly widows the family had given shelter to and begged them to tell her stories of their lives, of when they

Flight of Fantasy

Watercolour on paper 30.5 x 22.9 cm 2001

Page 18

Kashgar Woman

Watercolour on paper 22.9 x 25.4 cm 2005

Page 19

Head

Mixed media on Chinese gold board 22.9 x 28 cm 2014

Right

Untitled

Ink drawing 22.9 x 25.4 cm 2008

were young brides of the village. She never tired of hearing their stories and, in the quiet of the afternoon, as she sat listening to them, she often sketched in her drawing book the impressions of those tales. They were like fairytales—far removed from her own life in the crowded metropolis of Bombay.

Rini inhabited a secret world even as a child, a world where there was romance and tragedy in equal measure, and love and loss. She yearned to journey to Itakumari; she yearned to lose herself in the stories of the women widowed and abandoned, who had found new lives and hopes when society had almost shunned them. Drawn to lives, Rini began her journey as an artist, documenting the stories of the widowed women she had befriended. Her models/friends cheered her early efforts and encouraged her to find her wings as an artist. Studying art at Baroda, Santiniketan and Paris, Rini honed her skills as a print-maker and painter, receiving recognition for her merit early in her career. Being adventurous, she experimented with other mediums, working with ceramics, textiles and glass, holding successful exhibitions across the country. Yet, despite all her other commitments, she continued to draw whenever she found the time, and even when she had none, pursuing a passion she had always nurtured.

The shadow of myth has always been a part of her narrative; the folklores she has heard over the years have become entwined with her work, as if an organic part of her pictorial realm. The religious icons of Devi, as Durga or Kali, dominate her canvas—their magnificent personas towering over the others. Rini is an inveterate traveller, and her drawings of the iconic deities like Durga or Shiva are sourced from her wanderings across the country. She has spent hours observing the pilgrims in Varanasi as they prayed on the ghats by the Ganges. In the temples, as the evening arti was taking place, she has stood imbibing the incense-scented atmosphere of the pujaris invoking the gods. She has seen the rites and rituals of life and death by the Ganga on her many visits to Varanasi and Gaya. She has travelled across Europe and Asia acquainting herself with churches, temples, mosques and other places of worship to experience how faith impacted lives even as violence tore the world asunder in conflict zones nearby. It has never ceased to intrigue her, the inexplicable ways of the world! Across diverse cultures and faith lines she has stood unobtrusively and sketched her impressions of the people she encountered. In her studio, later, randomly sketched impressions were the skeletons she fleshed out into formal compositions on paper, with charcoal or fine pencils.

In the artist’s studio, drawings are often chroniclers of time, holding in their stillness the passage of time. In her quiet studio, with its views of an unkempt rambling park, squirrels run amuck in the majestic fig tree as the day turns to dusk. Within, time stands still; the sepia-tinted postcards hark back to a time when artist

Udaipur Drawing

Ink on paper 22 x 25.4 cm 2001

Untitled

Drawing on rice paper 24 x 12.7 cm 2000

Kamdenu Indian

Watercolour on paper 30.5 x 35 cm 2000 gurus wrote to their students—often scribbling a drawing at the back of the letter. Somnath Hore’s postcards are stacked in a corner, alongside old albums; there is a strange order in the disorder. The people in the photographs have long died, Somnath Hore too has gone, but Rini is a keeper of mementoes, and treasures her assemblage of memories. The images kept aside for preservation are a reference for her compositions that seek not to encompass time but go beyond it. For Rini, drawings reveal her romantic nature and the wistful hope that the world is not all bleak. The painted moment is when the pictorial realm is more consciously created, with swathes of colour and motifs building up the narrative. Shorn of these facilities the drawing has to make a distinction so that it is not seen as an imitative act but an independent exercise. Rini Dhumal’s draughtsmanship has that command and dexterity that lends her drawings substance and gravitas. Long hours of practice with the charcoal sticks and pencil while sketching random scenes or activity have helped her master the art of drawing. Today, her fluid lines are confident and assured, never waffling nor uncertain. The tableau, bleached of colour, is dramatic and intense; the monk’s tonsured head is caught in profile while the monastery is captured in silhouette. What does he see? Is he yearning for another? The questions remain unanswered. In the next bunch of drawings scattered on the studio floor, dancers are pirouetting and laughing.

In the studio exists an unreal world inhabited by characters both imagined and real, in situations that verge from the exultant to melancholic. The artist’s journey is guided by a map that disregards man-made borders and boundaries—Rini’s fascination for ancient civilisation has led her to travel down the historic Silk Route across China in an attempt to discover the mythic sagas she had only read about. As I engage with her in a dialogue about her practice, her drawings bring back memories of our travels from the Silk Route to Greece when I had actually witnessed her dexterity at the drawing board as she hurriedly captured moments from the bus/train or when we were strolling down market squares/archaeological sites. A wizened old man smiles. A lovely bride poses in the Summer Palace. An urchin begs for alms. The procession of life in its many vignettes is captured in the contour of a figure or an expression that says so much wordlessly. From afar, music wafts across the faraway lands, as a band strikes up a lively ballad somewhere. Meticulously detailed, the drawings emerge finally from the random, fleeting sketches as complete works—an artist’s homage to life.

A certain traveller who knew many continents was asked what he found most remarkable of all. He replied: the fact that there are sparrows (les piafs) everywhere. Adam Zagajewski

Fantasy

Watercolour on paper 30.5 x 30.5 cm 2005