Finding the Flowers, by Chandana Hore

Chandana Hore?s exhibition of oil paintings convey a great sense of plentitude and abundance, of richness and colour ? smooth, velvety and creamy colour ? that often shimmers and pulsates like patches of sunshine, and is able to project a density one associates with sculpture. Chandana revels in the act of painting itself, which gives her work a sensuous quality. It radiates a joy that artists rarely dare to indulge in these days, lest their style be damned with odious comparisons or they be branded regressive.

The artist is holding her first big exhibition in Calcutta at the Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre.

It is easy to picture Chandana in her studio, patting dollops of pigment onto the canvas, turning them into a gooey mass with the spatula, and creating great bodies of colour, furrowed and ridged. She uses colour like a potter moulds clay. Colour itself is form for her, and she uses it inventively, often in startling juxtapositions. Her smaller canvases, too, convey this sense of the immanence of colour.

Her canvases seem to be in the embrace of plush, old velvet. Deep purple and bottle green are her favourite colours, colours that remind one of a heavy bouquet of roses. These heavy, luxuriant shades are thrown in striking contrast with bright turquoise and ultramarine, hot yellows and oranges and warm browns that seem to be derived from Indian miniatures and patas.

The forms that she creates by imbricating pigments, as it were, are quite as generous. Large, fleshy human forms, sometimes in voluptuous languor, occupy her canvases. They are either solitary or in engagement with similarly endowed beings, not necessarily of any particular sex, though occasionally their femininity is pronounced.

It is easy to read the varied sources from which Chandana has built up these forms, Cezanne, Matisse of the later period, Arpita Singh and certain Kalighat patas being some of the most obvious. Of course, she has absorbed and assimilated these influences and what she presents is her own. There is no denying this.

Having said this, however, it has to be pointed out that after viewing the exhibition in its entirety, a certain feeling of sameness does set in. Viewers may not share her attachment for the figures she depicts. She needs to create more space for viewers if her paintings are to be appreciated as works of art.