Thoughts on a woman

Many find their perfect muse among many things, but the most common of them all are women.The same seems to be the case with city-based artist Gangadhar Veerla whose latest exhibition, ‘Different Strokes’ is a series of paintings that try to bring out various feminine shades.Hosted at Beyond Coffee, the paintings are a collection of about 30 paintings painted in various hues of mustard, blue, red, green and orange.A common thread to his paintings was however seen in the black and white theme he maintained for most part of the collection.Ask him why, and the artist shrugs of the question as simply being an artistic preference.Painted on canvas with mixed media but using a strong streak of acrylic, the paintings revolve around women in rustic settings or abstract backgrounds.While one shows a tribal woman, there’s another that shows a mother and daughter from a village.Tradition is this exhibition’s talking point. Says Veerla, “There is a unique kind of texture to the paintings and all of them are freestyle. Most artists prefer women as their subject and the same is the case here.”This is the artists’ third solo exhibition, besides hosting others at Chennai and Bengaluru.A journalist by profession, Veerla comes from an artistic family background; his grandfather and uncle were painters too.Thus having grown up around sketches and paints, his passion for painting became a natural trait.A look at the collection as a whole shows a hint of emotions of a woman portrayed through his use of dark colours like ink blue, blood red, dark orange, bright yellow and sea green, besides his monochromatic sketches of black and white.Adding to his fascination with the rustic traditional presentation of the ‘fairer’ kind, his paintings appear to be animated.While explaining his technique, the artist indicated that the paintings were created directly with paint, without a pencil sketch to guide the design.‘Different Strokes’ does seem to be interesting, though the artist’s inspiration is a common and over exemplified muse.The exhibition, which costs between anything Rs 3,000 and 35,000 per canvas, ends today.