I’ve wanted to do a post on the Mithila artist Rambharos for some time and Tara Books in Chennai, India has now given me the perfect opportunity with their publication of Waterlife, a beautiful volume of his paintings of the aquatic life that inhabits the ponds and lakes of his boyhood home.
Waterlife is a handmade book of high quality with 12 hand silkscreened prints on handmade paper in a limited edition of 3000 . From the solid feel of the cerulean blue cover with its image of a large whale-like fish to the texture of the handmade paper within – with its styllized but alive paintings of crabs, turtles, and imagined creatures – there is nothing about this volume that does not delight. The printing is superb with even the smallest details clearly delineated while the colors stay vibrant and sharp. A short paragraph that introduces each painting to give some background on why Rambharos choose that particular image also adds greatly to the enjoyment of the pieces.
Here is Marriage Symbol. His rendering of the traditional lotus painting at marriage ceremonies.
It’s a joyous piece with a contemporary feel. The white swans gliding, almost flying, on the dark blue water while the lotuses with their long stems curve over each other forming a trelissed archway to the new beginning for the married couple. The apparent simplicity of the piece is misleading. Notice how a curved line is used to create volume in the lotus flower, a short angled line for the supple stems, and note especially the dashes to render movement in the water. The dash lines are not at all random as they first appear. Look at the two large lotus flowers. Rambharos draws them slightly differently as they respond to the water’s flow. The one on the right has all its petals lying in the same direction as the water. The dashes, the water, flow uniformly around it. The lotus on the left, the petals are more open as they respond to the water’s turbulence. The dashes are closer together, here and there, angled. The water is not all in the same direction and causes the petals to separate.
Here is The Octopus at Home, an imagined octopus at mealtime.
A whimsical, almost playful piece but a closer look again reveals the careful choices Rambhros made to achieve this apparent childlike simplicity. The figures stand out clearly from their aquatic background and, as in the Marriage piece above, each figure has its unique pattern of lines and cross hatchings. Here however the background, the water, takes on a very complicated look with swirls, curlicues, dashes, dark and light. The different patterns divide the picture plane into quadrants around the central figure of the octopus, each pattern a setting for the starfish and the other three sea creatures. Rambharos continues the tradition of Mithila artists who used to fill the empty areas of their paintings with foliage or other decorative elements, but he almost turns the tradition on its head by making that empty space a principle element in the painting.
Rambharos began as a traditional Mithla painter and with hindsight we can see hints of his later style in the early paintings. Look at this piece from 1996 entitled Fish and Butterflies.
The work is clearly recognizable as Mithila with its border and traditional motif of lotus and pond and fish. But already we see water holding an important place in the work. Not only does it take up three quarters of the painting but the attention given to its representation is an indication of what is to come later. Note also that this early piece has the same formal arrangement as the Octopus painting above. The lotus plant divides the painting vertically into two mirror images while the water line separates the sky and water giving us a similar quadrant setting. Instead of the octopus however, we have a stylized lotus flower at the center.
Twelve years later in 2008 there is Snake Goddess.
The painting, a stunning piece that is part of the EAF’s Travel Exhibition, has many of the elements of Mithila art, the signature almond eye and the pond creatures, but in design and execution Rambharos has made the tradition his own. He is now moving toward a minimalism in representation, looking for the simplest means to render the traditional motifs of Mithila art but yet imbue them with a vitality that is more than real. The turtle, the lotus, the snake, all iconic representations, simply drawn yet very much alive. And note the water, the lines drawn individually with a nib pen, the current, the movement, coming together, apart, in all directions. A pond has never looked more alive.
Rambharos has moved well beyond the tradition. As he painted, as he worked at this art, he began to expand his vision and with that his visual vocabulary. As he puts it, he began to follow the line of his hand. Waterlife is a both a result and a part of that process. The style is not Mithila but the foundation and spirit is.
Waterlife will be available in the US in April, 2012. For those who can’t wait (like yours truly) or perhaps need an exceptional holiday gift, they can order it directly from Tara Books and have it delivered in three days. The shipping costs as much as the book but if you order an extra gift copy or two (or get together with some friends) this reduces the cost significantly.
