From a remote village in West Bengal to being one of the Delhi’s most sought after artists Paresh Maity unveils his book, World of Watercolours, showcasing 40 years of his journey. By Ankita Jain
The purity of his colours have a soothing effect on one’s mind and the dream-like images transport one to another world. Standing in front of his canvas, you are likely to experience a barrage of emotions all at once. Paresh Maity’s boats, rural landscapes and faces are as much about an inward journey as they are about the numerous travels he has undertaken and continues to do so. For Paresh colours keep coming in and going, one can witness this with his complete white project in Banaras.
The current exhibition at the Taj Mahal Hotel includes a repertoire of canvases and enormous installation (that only fit into container). We stand face-to-face with an eight-and-a-half-feet-tall installation of a face, Sounds of Silence, made using 4,000 golden bells. He also unveiled his book World of Watercolours which is a collection of all his works.
His exhibited works — watercolour paintings — have an old-world charm. Boats, river banks, and dupatta-clad women remain recurring elements, and primary colours dominate many of them. These are remnants of visuals that Parvesh was exposed to as a child, growing up in scenic Tamluk in West Bengal. His first tryst with art was moulding wet clay after watching artists making sculptures of goddesses Kali and Durga. With no artist in the family, and no role model to follow, Paresh paved his own way. Even as he worked on getting his lines right, he continued to maintain an impressive academic record.
One is certainly happy and feel uplifted when he/she sees his work. The first thing he does when he wake ups in the morning is open the curtains and let the light come in. He feels such positive energy and wants to pass it on. light has a distinctive character in his art. On his canvases, the emphasis of light can be seen vividly. He is one of those artists, who prefers to work in broad daylight and in his initial years, he used to paint outdoors. He has sat in Banaras, Santiniketan, Himachal, Venice and other places and observed light for hours.
On painting and its challenges, he says, “It is itself a trigger for me. I can paint anywhere and anytime. The day I can’t, I get very annoyed. I feel at peace when I paint. And you can get lost while painting a larger-than-life work. You don’t know where to begin and where to stop. On not being drawn to ‘cutting edge’ art I believe in myself. I believe in tradition and I like my work to be rooted. I might be able to create art in another language but that won’t be mine.”
looking back, Paresh realised that as he shifted from one place to another, his style of painting transformed. In my formative years, he was inspired by two very famous water colourists from Britain — Joseph Mallord William Turner and John Constable. By the time he settled in Delhi, his works became more figurative.
Inspiration comes easy for Maity, and so does the resilience to complete the works — a few of which take over a year to perfect. With no television, mobile phone or the Internet, Maity has managed to keep his routine immune to distractions. A stickler for discipline, he starts painting at dawn, and wraps up work at the first sign of dusk — a routine that he followed even as an artist-in-residence at Rashtrapati Bhavan in 2015. Art, he says, is a 24x7 profession — extending even as part of dinner conversations with his wife and artist Jayasri Burman.