Durga Encore, Random Women & Two Little Girls

I am usually up to date on my activities in the kitchen or outside it! I painted these some weeks ago. They probably got buried under all those Spring posts I was doing.

The last two Frida-faced little girls are copies from an artist called Tascha.

The Copycat Returns With Two Elephants

What do you get when you are at ease with copying masterpieces?

A homemade and affordable way of having two of Husain’s famous Ganesha paintings. After doing Saraswati a few days ago, I wanted to paint (okay, copy!) Ganeshas. These are my first set of Ganeshas, if I don’t account for the one done on handmade paper and charcoal when I was a teenager. And that was an original!

The two-headed Naad Swaram Ganeshayem.And this one is simply called Ganesha…

  I made these yesterday while I was daydreaming about India, and drinking my kewra lassi (with a dollop of vanilla ice cream) and doing the daily crossword. Just then a sudden flash of genius!
Waxing on about Husain twice in a week is just weird, right? Especially when there is so much controversy surrounding him…
But my thick head doesn’t get any of that! Never will.
My brain can be very lame sometimes, especially when it wins.

Husain @ Home & A Prayer To Saraswati

There is a saying in Hindi which literally means that Wealth (Goddess Lakshmi) and Knowledge (Goddess Saraswati) do not reside in the same abode at the same time. However there are some exceptions to even ancient Hindu beliefs, like the 95-year-old Husain. The man is dripping talent and a happy millionaire all at the same time.

Why I copied his Saraswati only Goddess Lakshmi will understand and empathize. That whopping price tag, in case you were left wondering!As a kid, I was always taught by my righteous parents not to cheat or copy. They still believe hard work goes a long way. I too completely agree to that thought, but only as a thought. Else how would you explain my passing the Accounts exam during my MBA days! Accounts was beyond my reach, and cheating within the realm of my conscience.

Today, I want to say a little prayer to Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge and art, and ask for Her divine forgiveness for all the times I have cheated and copied blatantly from the boy or girl sitting next to me during examinations. And to MF Husain for copying his painting on to cheap art paper and acrylic paint, and hanging it on my wall.

This is by far the only way I can afford you, Mister Husain.

My Girl Durga!

Independent. Powerful. Divine. Beautiful. Fearful. Friendly. Unattainable. Alluring. Enigmatic.
Beyond reach…

That’s my girl. Durga.Last year, I got the original art by Debashish Deb as a Durga Pujo greeting from my friend in Calcutta, RJS.

Though I could never really create what the artist has in the original painting, but I feel immensely content with my first Durga painting.My other Durga-endeavors are these photographs I clicked in 2008, New Delhi, during Durga Puja hopping between pandals in Chittaranjan Park.

That is the Goddess’ Canadian avatar @ Durga Pujo 2009, Kalibari, GTA.   

She comes in clay… She comes in color…But she only comes to us once in a year!

Till we go pandal-hopping again, in the words of my great grandmother-Naani…

Dugga Dugga!!

The Elephant Is On The Wall!

My decision to do just the elephant from Roy’s Man and Elephant looked good when I teamed it up with the Black Horse I did yesterday.

I kept the same basic colors of heavy body red, carbon black, ochre yellow, and white, except that I used phthalo blue for the body of the elephant. I had used black for the horse’s.

And here is what the folksy elephant looks like…

The Haathi-Ghoda (Elephant-Horse) Pair

 

There Is Something About Mondays

I probably live in two worlds. One which hates Mondays and the other which looks forward to the start of the week, for the simple reason that it will eventually get me to another weekend! That’s how farfetched my optimism is.

Last Monday’s cam-to-cam conversation with my Ma-in-law about Jamini Roy, and her family’s close association with the great painter made me really excited.

I like to hear stories, and Ma is a great story teller or so I’d like to boast about her. I was told that a certain someone of Jamini Roy’s family used to “copy” his paintings and they would look exactly the same. And both of us joked about me copying The Doll, and that it did not look bad for a copy!

That was last Monday but today is another day.

Today I got over-enthusiastic about doing The Black Horse, and probably pair it up with an elephant to match the zillion Ganeshas that we have at home.

And here is what the end result was:

  Up on the wall!

I am hoping to get some energy into my Monday mornings too, just like a black stallion…

 

…and I needed Fleetwood Mac to tell me “Monday morning you sure look fine…”

Art & Soul ~ Blue Buddha

I only dabbed the turquoise blue acrylic paint on the face (by holding the brush at a 90 degree angle), I did not do strokes on this one…

…also 'coz I was short of the turquoise blue paint! :-)

Still wet…

I did not know that this would look like an Avatar-inspired Buddha when I began doing it!