Traffic control-07 Painting

INVISIBLE GREENS All alone, he rides back to green Riding along the streets of Mysore, as an art student at Shree Kala Niketana School of Art, what haunted the imagination of Sujith Kumar was not the magnificent palace or the people moving without any hurry along the crowded streets of the laid-back city. Sure, he would sketch monuments and human faces to his heart’s content but rather than the beauty and solitude of humans it was the cycles and auto rickshaws that provoked Sujith's imagination, thus kindling his creative power. “Had there been only cycles and auto rickshaws in this world we would have been a happier lot, the world would have been greener and healthier,” says the artist. His words also have that minimalist touch, like his lines. It was this ‘healthy’ thought, which inspired Sujith to embark upon a series on auto rickshaws and cycles, which he would call ‘Traffic Control’. He sees the same cycle and auto rickshaw in different perspective, but every time you see these images you realise that it is a different one though it is the same. As Heraclitus once said, “You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing in.” Likewise whenever you draw the image it becomes a new one. And that newness is the invisible force behind Sujith's compositions. “Cycle is a dream and a carrier of life for the rustic Indian middle class. Every time I look at the same cycle it appears to be a new one to me; in a way it is the cycle of life…” he says. Though the cycles and auto rickshaws in Sujith’s paintings are placed in an urban setting, it is far away from the hullabaloo of the city life. It is utter silence that pervades in these compositions. With a few suggestive strokes of the electric lamp posts and traffic signals he gives a picture of the urban life (and lifelessness, at times). His earlier paintings of the human life in the urban dwellings also have the same quality of silence and solitude. In the backdrop of the burning issue of global warming, there is an eco-sensitive approach in Sujith’s works. When he sees urbanscapes without the onslaught of any motor vehicles except the auto rickshaws, his art is actually getting transformed into a vehicle of the ecological concerns of a straightforward human being. Interestingly, the image of the water bottle that crops up here and there in his compositions should be seen in this context only. As we all know water is the casualty of the urban onslaught. “I can’t see any humanity in city life, there is no peace…. It’s all rat race, but in villages you see the real humanity living in peace…” In a way Sujith talks about going back to nature with his tiny images of cycles. However, the politics and ecological concerns apart, what strikes the viewer is the ease with which he handles the lines, which is not very common in oil paintings. And there lies the strength of the artist who brought perfection to his lines over the years with his pencil. “As a student in Mysore it was a routine for me to draw people, places and objects to my heart’s content,” says this young artist. “My concern had always been to create an object with minimum strokes.” Though in the initial stage Sujith’s canvases were the playground of human forms, later they vanished into the hazy background of the urban settings and the cycles and auto rickshaws emerged from the invisible streets. Despite the recurrence of the same images in almost all canvases, what one feels is a kind of continuity from one composition to another. With the use of colours and the strength of his lines Sujith recreates a world that we have all failed to recognize, though it is around us. Sujith’s cycle is riding back to nature. From the crowded cityscapes to the lush green landscapes of serenity. It is a ride back to the never-ending green...