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'alluvium', a solo of my watercolours opened on sept. 27th 2008 at
kashi gallery, fort kochi, kerala.
Following is the edited version of a series of conversations between
Rajan Krishnan and Sebastian Varghese.
Rajan Krishnan: Tell me Sebastian, about your trajectories in the past few years as an artist, especially in the context of your decision to come back from the United States to India and work from here. Is it because you felt the need to connect back to your geographical and cultural roots? Or, are there more reasons?
If so, how do you assimilate the experience of staying away for about one and half decades from India, and coming back to your homeland as it goes through a period of high-end economical and cultural changes?
Sebastian Varghese: Soon after my BFA from College of Fine Arts, Trivandrum, I left for the States in 1994. I stayed in New York and New Jersey for about an year, and later on moved to Dallas, Texas. Reaching the States, I did not feel much of a cultural shock in the beginning, as I was frequently visiting museums and spending time with the works of European masters. However, life outside the museums was entirely different. Even though I had to do odd jobs to support myself, I was preoccupied with my art making in relation with the changed circumstances, and the new experiences.
I tried to incorporate my new observations into the work and did a series called ‘In transit’ which showed certain things about ‘exile,’ my self-imposed Diaspora. For sometime, I drifted between the possibilities of abstraction and figuration; between Marc Rothko and Wayne Thiebaud. It is the pairing of opposites; like the organic and man-made; the physical and metaphysical. I tried to make a chaotic memoir of it all. Now I’m left here with the residue and remains of those days. My work has changed into a process of skimming through all the polarities.
There are always fresh possibilities in any re-entry. I came back not exactly out of nostalgia, but more for a sense of belonging. I just wanted to get out of that feeling of ‘exile.’ At the same time, I had felt a strong attraction towards the ‘other side’ of America, the land that had once been inhabited by the Native Americans, who were later branded with the name ‘Red Indians,’ and confined to live in reserved areas. When you live in a place for 14 years, the land and the history of the people slowly becomes a part of you.
Drastic change is the religion of the day. The landscape everywhere changes dramatically. Here, the economic boom induces a faster transformation than before. The environmental impact is obvious. I have started noticing many new changes taking place in my work too. Alluvium is a reflection of my assimilation of changes into my art.
R K: How did you find living and working in the US as an immigrant artist? Did the changed environment/context affect your work?
S V: In the States, I felt a sense of distinct Indianness which I had not felt back home. America is a melting pot which advocates uniformity. But, despite its seeming homogeneity, it does have various pockets of diverse culture that span across its territory. Regional differences are as prevalent more or less as they are in India. Ethnic communities maintain their identities. Greek and Italian families still keep connections with their homeland. There is a ‘China Town’ area in almost every city. Many Mexican immigrants speak only Spanish and preserve their culture intact. African Americans have their own life styles, food habits, music and dialect. There are places where Indians live in clusters and try hard to preserve the culture. The demand for integration while maintaining the uniqueness in the same breath is very much there. A dialectical understanding has to evolve to digest this, I think. I kept observing all the diversities existing in the American society so as to comprehend more and appreciate the culture and people back in India.
I had to re-evaluate my impressions of Western art, especially since I was much attracted to the works of Western masters. So I started referring through the originals of old masters like Peter Bruegel and Bosch again, to understand the depiction of land in their works where their narrative was happening. I looked again at the works of American painters like Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth, Wayne Thiebaud and David Bates. The land is almost as important as the rest of the content in these artists’ works.
Since my arrival in the States, it took me about four years to get back to my work. It was a little longer than I had initially expected. I went through my share of despair and euphoria during my attempts to recommence working, and I had my ‘Eureka’ moments and dull ones as well. Now, I realize that the rejections I’d faced in the States as a young artist helped me in the long run.
In the meantime, I started to study computer graphics and worked for a printing company as an artist. The travel bug was still very much alive and I crisscrossed the land, working as a freelance artist for publications. The company did campus workshops which were held at various universities in different parts of the country. This line of work took me all over the place, exposing me to the splendour and vastness of that land. Eventually I developed a strong connection with the terrain, more so with those who occupied it. I made many good friends along the way. Especially artists of Mexican origin like Sara Cardona, and Ali Akbar from Bangladesh. I started showing in various galleries in San Jose, California and at Decorazon Gallery in Dallas, Texas, where Mexican and other artists of ethnic origin used to show.
R K: I remember that you used to be a traveller even when you had joined the College of Fine Arts. You used to carry bundles of sketch books as your travelogues which were thickly populated. There were people every where in those books. You were also repeating some sort of a celestial couple in your paintings and drawings which reminded me of some of Khalil Gibran’s drawings and also the works of Odilon Redon, the French Symbolist painter. Well, Gibran was one of the hovering writers over our dreamy life of those days. And we always loved the French Masters, and the German Expressionists. But coming back to your present watercolours, I don’t see any human figure in them. How did this human absence happen in your recent works?
S V: Looking at the human form is like reflecting on our own inside. After living and travelling in North America, the absence of people outside the cities and the endless vistas of the land slowly expanded something inside me. I used to have the same sense of connectedness with the land while I was in India too. It was a natural urge to bring the feeling of aloneness in the midst of all the drama going on around. As you’ve mentioned, Gibran’s illustrations and artists like Odelion Redon’s works were also communicated in this context. Besides them, I was interested in the works of American artists like David Bates and Andrew Wyeth, to name some who have depicted the land and the people with equal significance.
R K: Alluvium is soil or sediments deposited by a river or other running water. It often contains valuable ores such as gold and platinum and a wide variety of gemstones. Your weed paintings in watercolour hark back to the unused and water clogged paddy fields, once the treasury of food grains, seen still here and there amidst the sprouts of concrete and debris. How did you arrive at painting the floating water weeds? Is there a certain deliberate assertion towards any of the green issues in your alluvium paintings?
S V: The awakening of life everywhere in the early morning hours is always intriguing to me. Long morning walks along the side roads of backwaters and canals near my house in Kochi is a part of my daily routine. My observance of the immediate surroundings happens better at daybreak hours than any other time of the day. For instance, Water Hyacinths – the floating weeds – in the back waters create an arresting and unusual metaphoric scenario. I have seen similar water plants along the banks of the Mississippi river near New Orleans. They are very aggressive plants and an obvious impediment to navigation. Their arrival can be likened to that of the African Locusts which descend in hoards and consume everything they encounter. Yet their appearance is ethereal in a way that they create a surreal vastness over the aqua-scape. They could stand for many things. Their leaves change colours as weeks go by. Their layers hide sediments like memories. As eerie as these scenarios manifest, I realize there are unnoticed subtleties functioning here too. Their flowing nature reflects the transience of everything.
I started doing small drawings and watercolour studies of various water-plant forms during late last year. Arrival at these sequential paintings demanded more than a logical awareness from me. These images are aggregate deposits of memory and observance. The word ‘alluvial’ itself conjures up a homage to the fluidity of water and the detritus or particles of memory. The residue breathe in and breathe out memories. Alluvium could contain valuable remnants, ores and variety of gemstones. Also, sediments may transform into gems overtime under immense pressure.
The ecology changes in our face now. Uncultivated fields, other wasted resources and numerous examples of mismanagement are evident every where around. Even though I am concerned with green issues at some levels, I don’t think my works are their direct representations.
R K: Watercolour suits to enhance the content and concept of your Alluvium paintings. Was it a conscious choice to work with watercolour?
S V: Two years ago when I started working in Kochi, I was yearning for a radical shift both in the content and in my way of working. Remember Rajan, I came to your studio and we discussed art in general and various mediums in specific. I had been working in opaque medium before; mostly oils and some acrylics. After my arrival here, I wanted to start working and I did not have a large enough space to set a formal studio up. So I started on small papers and those were miniature size images of mundane objects in watercolour. The result was very encouraging. From the feedback I realized that the essence of those rusty objects was communicated well. By that time I painted hundreds of miniature chairs and then moved to various forms like bags and other everyday articles. I became really inspired to keep on working with the water medium. When the observance and thought process evolved further, I did the studies on the water plants and other elements from the landscape around. It was evident that these fluid and earthy subjects work very well in watercolour. So, one thing lead to another and the ‘Alluvium’ paintings were born. In a way the content was choosing the medium, and I was just letting it happen.
R K: Sebastian, I’d like to know something about your growing up in a village near Kozhikode, north Kerala. You once told me that you were teaching English in a primary school when you were in your Twenties. And Kozhikode used to be a sweltering hub of cultural and intellectual activities those days, especially in the last three decades.
S V: That’s true. I taught schools for some years. Teaching was more or less a family tradition for me, you could say. My parents were teachers, who had migrated to Malabar (the northern districts of Kerala are known under this collective name), in the early Fifties from the south of Kerala. Father hailed from Pavaratty, in Thrissur district and mother from Pala, in Kottayam district. They settled down in Thiruvampady, a mountainous village near Kozhikode nestled in the valleys of the Western Ghats. I grew up there.
Located on the shores of the river, ‘Iruvazhinjippuzha,’ Thiruvampadi was the quintessential tropical haven. The thick vegetation around our house, the river and its rich delta sculpted my childhood. My parents were teachers by profession, but farmers at heart. We lived in a farm-house, with some land around where we cultivated the necessary vegetables, and food grains, especially paddy.
We children used to walk about two miles to reach the school every day. On our way we had to cross a river in a small canoe. Those days the monsoon felt heavy. During my leisure I used to draw, and paint landscapes with washes of writing-ink. There were story tellers and folk musicians in the village. My mother taught us stories from the Bible. An aged neighbour used to narrate stories from Ramayana and Mahabharatha to us. I would wait excitedly for his story-telling sessions every evening.
My higher education was rather erratic. After completing Pre-Degree, I did my teachers’ training, and started working in a single-teacher school in Koodaranji, near my village. I taught in a primary school for three years. Later, I moved on to an Upper Primary run by the state government. Meanwhile, I had completed my bachelors in English Literature.
Those years were significant in many ways. The new school I taught was located on the way to the city of Kozhikode. And, Kozhikode of those days -in the Eighties- was an active hub of film, theatre and intellectual activities, in general. The maverick film maker John Abraham was in his prime. I was involved with the ‘Nethi’ Film Society, in Kozhikode. The society used to bring films from many sources, including the National Film Archives of Pune. On one occasion, the film spools of ‘Pather Panchali,’ the Sathyajit Ray classic, remained in our possession for quiet some time. Before it was returned we screened the film many times for ourselves.
R K: What about your introduction to Guru Nitya Chaithanya Yati? Nitya was a solace for a good number of youth during the hypothetical stir in the end of the Eighties in Kerala. He had a deep concern for visual art as well. His writings, especially on Vincent Van Gogh, was most read and discussed in Kerala in 1990, in the backdrop of the centenary year of the artist’s mortal demise.
S V: Towards the end of the Eighties, I met Guru Nitya Chaithanya Yati. Even before meeting Nitya, I had a good correspondence with him; Nitya was very good in communicating through letters. Later, he invited me to Fern Hill, Ooty, to attend a seminar on music. I was asked to help record the audio and document the whole seminar which lasted for one month. Among the participants, there were classical vocalists like Neyyattinkara Vasudevan and Ramesh Narayanan. The seminar with daily live performances was an unforgettable experience. I stayed in Fern Hill for about three months, on leave from my school.
Soon, I became a frequent visitor to Fern Hill. Guru Nitya was passionate about art and gave me a lot of materials to work with. I did a series of watercolour landscapes during my stay there. By that time, I was totally fed up with my life as a teacher. Around March of 1989, I left the job. Soon afterwards, I moved to Chandigarh, and then to Delhi and lived there for an year. Later, I returned to Trivandrum and joined the Government College of Fine Arts.
R K: You saw a flowering art scene in India once you are back. How did it inspire you? How do you look at the works of your contemporaries in India?
S V: I was surprised to see the high energy in the art scene here. The genuine interest is always encouraging. When everyone is ‘in spirit’, how can anyone not get ‘inspired’? I hope this unusual enthusiasm will bring some substantial shift in our sensibility for good. I believe the genuine artists will be recognized after all the dust is settled down. I am sure that now there won’t be any more question asked by the rest of the world like, “Is there contemporary art in India?”
It is very interesting to see that most works of my contemporaries are very candid and direct. They are political as well as metaphysical commentaries. I know this is a fine line to walk. It is very exciting to be a part of it all.
R K: Let me ask you a cliché question, what’s after ‘Alluvium?’
S V: Well, at this moment I am re-working one of my earlier series, ‘OBJECTS.’ Some of the simple objects, like a coiled garden hose or a common wash basin for example, invoke the life in our new urban environs. I really believe that one could interpret and extract a meaningful focus out of ‘anything and everything’ inside and around us.
-text edited by Renu Ramanath
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