The artist, who has been campaigning for restoration of a community park, is painting her crusade on a canvas. By Uma Nair
Artist Arpana Caur has taken her real world crusade on Delhi’s green cover to her canvas at the venue she is fighting for. “It is perhaps easier to paint trees, difficult to fight for them on the ground, even legally. Over 8,000 trees were cut on Siri Fort Road 10 years ago. A very small group of us fought in the Supreme Court to prevent commercialising of the area, won after eight years, and had 2,500 trees planted there. Since 17 years my mother and I, along with two or three activists, are fighting in courts for a public park near us which has become a very commercial banquet venue. I was even at the Green Tribunal. So hard for a quiet introverted creature to leave her studio and face monsters. Look at the monstrosity that has come up opposite AIIMS,” she tells us animatedly.
At Siri Fort, she has been part of many a campaign to stop the felling of trees for mindless ventures such as open areas for food courts that result ina huge pile-up of garbage.
Caur has over the years created a number canvasses that serve as an advocate for trees and their role in the ecological system. From atmosphere and symbolism to textures and abstract shapes, she explores trees in a way that is both unique and rare. As far back as 1997, Caur’s diptych Kalpavriksha Tree of Desire has been a brilliant iconographic symbol. “This works on two levels,” says Caur. “First, it reflects a longing for nature around us and a longing for youth and creativity.”
Two of her canvases depict yogis with trees. The first is a yogi created against a buttercup yellow background with succulent looking trees sprinkled at distant quarters. If the yogi’s posture is one of great poise, it is the trees that give us something to savour. In Yogi and the River of Time, she divides her canvas into columns and places different trees.
Caur’s in-depth details and treatment of contour and colour are what define her moorings. Her trees do not look like general impressions, rather she lovingly composes individual “portraits” of trees with a dulcet density that is both evocative and elegant. She also adds abstract connotations and contexts as she sometimes crops the images (with just the trunks showing or the branches coming in from the side of the picture).
While Caur’s trees seem delicate, fragile and transient, we can look closer and see that they are captured for the patterns or shadows they create rather than just to record the details of their features. It is here that one reckons that Caur has a very deep understanding of miniature traditions of the Pahari school as well as Mughal miniatures. Whether she creates detailed depictions of single trees or gives us thin, spring-like feathery contours, her depiction drives home the intended message.
Through her sprinkling of trees, trunks, leaves across the canvas, she doesn’t want to create a realistic depiction of what the landscape looks like. Her aim is to reveal the underlying structure of the land and give a sense of its character and spirit even as she weaves in a tale that belongs to literature as well as history. While she paints with loose, fluid brush strokes and a range of textures and tensile marks, she gives her paintings an overwhelming sense of movement and vitality and a vintage aura. In short, they bring back the words of Hermann Hesse when he said, “Trees are sanctuaries.”