Work-in-progress; bye bye 2023!
By: Kamal Rajput
Dear Reader,
Oddly, let me share this painting of mine, which is still a work-in-progress. I take a long time to complete projects. Some are wrapped up in two to three weeks and some require a month or so. I like to take time and I want to give all the time to my art. So it happens to be that I am sharing pictures and updates of the work-in-progress more than the final, shiny piece, which appears on my Instagram feed once a month.
For a change, I cancelled all my travel plans this year due to two reasons. First: the news about the continuous traffic jam in the mountains and people had to wait for 7 hours to complete a journey of 2 hours. All the visuals on my mobile phone, where a series of vehicles lining the serpent roads reaching towards the tawny mountain crotch, made my throat itch.
Secondly, I see this as an opportunity to spend more time with myself in my slow-moving space, with an uninterrupted supply of milky tea, to work on the new painting or maybe read another book apart from the one I planned to carry.
The year 2023 has been a very special year of my life. A total of 16 paintings and one work-in-progress. I began to write blogs after a long battle inside my head about what-will-people-think of my writing. I wrote eleven blogs in this year (2023). It took me a long time to be comfortable that people would read my pieces. Is my grammar correct? I had nightmares about that.
I have also realised that art is nothing but and can solely be described as an act of courage. It is like a river dark and one has to jump, splashing the surface and then quietly diving deep to journey the unexplored. Maybe during that exploration, you will find yourself.
I remember a road trip to Manali with a friend, back in 2018, the Art bug had not bitten me yet. Though I was reading very passionately and absent-mindedly scrawling on the back of the books. We had been staying in a place run by a foreign national. Someone who came here to seek spiritual experience must have been smitten by the beauty of the valley and had stayed here for eternity. A lady in her forties, vegan, with a pale complexion and a cheerful disposition, short height and nimble feet. Every time, she looked at my friend she screamed his name and I was so coy that I had to find ways to camouflage in the background. On one such instance, when both of us were about to leave the premises of the hotel and were standing under a tall pine tree, and were halted by a scream at the back. On that day, my friend introduced me to the owner as an Artist and trust me all I wanted to do was to vanish in thin air!
Though I began painting in 2021, carrying the tag of an Artist was still uneasy for me. But slowly, people started calling me “Painter Babu”, “Painter Ji” or “yeh toh Artist type hai”, and I grinned at their comments. Cambridge Dictionary defines an “Artist” as someone who paints, draws, or makes sculptures. As per the definition, I fit the bill. Anyway, tag or no tag I love what I have been doing for the last two years.
Then there is another bigger challenge. A tall wall of questions — apart from my Imposter Syndrome that stays with me in the empty apartment. Each day, one question piling on another. Making it taller. The light receding. Darkness follows. Have I achieved what I have been trying to achieve? I meant more in terms of skills, not in a material way. Am I a finished product? Or am I still just a work-in-progress?
Last night I was sitting and working on this painting. After a quick sketching and outlining, I began to mix colours on the palette. So there were areas on the face which have such delicate colours that it was hard to emulate the same canvas. Repeatedly, I was getting confused and asking myself, “Is it more of a green or more of a yellow? Should I be using a bit of that Ivory black to dull down the colours? The list of questions was endless. It was hard for me to conclude. Deep sigh in the middle of the night!
I must tell you these questions never end, it’s just one question after another. I doubt if there is an end. There is just a beginning and work-in-progress. It is just like jumping in that river dark and trying to swim. Swim and explore!
Kamal is a Delhi-based artist. A writer and a painter. He is a Corporate Employee by day and an Art enthusiast by night.
Instagram: @a_bohemian_guy