Experiments in Ink, Tea & Charcoal

Isn’t it funny how inspiration can strike when you least expect it and when you need it most? Mine was during the Pangaea exhibition at The Saatchi Gallery. I concede that finding inspiration whilst visiting an art gallery is hardly surprising, it was more that I went out of curiosity & let’s face it it’s free. You see it was the ants that summoned me, I mean a room bursting forth with giant ants just calls to me. My inspiration did not however come from those formidable Formicidae; it came from within another room. It was a section of a large mixed media canvas that whacked me out of my artistic funk. The section was probably at best merely one ninth of the whole piece.

I am a loyal devotee of colour, which I suspect has a lot to do with my Indian heritage. There is a plethora of colour in the natural world to entrance and entice me, so naturally that’s how I think when I look at or sketch a scene. I may be drawing in graphite, but I am thinking in colour.

The on-going problem is, however, that I am being too literal with my interpretations and losing something of the feeling and mood I have experienced. So in desperation I abandoned my usual paints and implements and swapped them for charcoal, inks, tea, fingers, twigs and reed pens. Standing up and at arms length.

This has forced me to be more expressive and less artistically ‘constipated’. To be honest it was a wonderfully freeing experience.

To experiment and to play, to find some new challenge is what it’s all about. So I was able to look at my damselfly sketches anew and find ways of expressing something of their nature. To convey their poised and almost choreographed positions in the reeds, their angular resting poses and their delicate beauty. Also the magic of their dance, which you glimpse whilst peering through the reeds.

I just hope that I have managed to convey some of their magical essence.