Painter's Imaginative Forest: Memories from My Childhood Painting

Magunta Dayakar – Artist and Author Magunta Dayakar, born Magunta Venkata Subba Reddy, is a painter, writer, and filmmaker whose lifelong search for truth in art has led him through more than four decades of creative exploration. Author of over fifteen acclaimed books on painting, he is known for his clarity of thought and deep reflections on the artist’s inner journey. His writings move beyond technique to explore the character, emotion, and silence that shape true creativity. Through his series I, Forest Painter and earlier works, he continues to share insights that connect painting with life itself. My Dual Identity as an Artist Recently when I was working on my book, ' I, Forest Painter: Insights, perspectives and Finishing Moments ' ( Now, this book is available on Amazon) a visitor came to my place and looked at one of my paintings. She felt that one is pure abstract art, of course she appreciated it and interpreted it as ' some festival like scene'. I surprised for her comment as she was feeling the painting is abstract art. Why I surprised? Because to me, that is pure realism. I painted it the way we see the nature in first glance. When we see the nature in first glance we won't see anything particularly juse we see it as a whole. After a few moments we see the detail of everything as much as we spend time on it. I paint that way. To me that scene is a rocky slope surronded by dusty mounds, broken boulders, thikets, scattered leaves, debris and so on...Then why she commented like that. I know her background, she is raisen in the city all her life and she didn't have any experience with countryside so the shapes I painted are not familiar to her. So she expressed that way. That incidents enlighten me once again, the viewer interpret the things based on her/his past experiences. Because of her past experiences, she commented the painting as ' abstract. ' The same way I see and paint the things through my past experiences. We both are right. For her my paintings are abstract ... for me my paintings are pure realistic. So now I am both abstract and realistic painter... is it not interesting to know? “An artist who paints forests as lived memory — appearing abstract to some, deeply realistic to others.” - Magunta Dayakar