Anupam Listens to Nature's Monologue

"O for a life of sensations, rather than of thoughts!" yearned Keats nearly a couple of centuries ago. The craving is a perennial one touching the heart-chords of every artis. And Anupam Bhatnagar is no exception to it. A young, thriving artist from Ajmer, Anupam has searched for and found a life of sensations in the world of Nature. The present exhibition-the simla series by him do testify this fact. Nature provides him with all that he needs to feed his artistic hunger. The hush of the hills, the sounding cataracts, the ever-chanding sky with heavy horizons shouldered and then merging with the butter- scotched peaks in and around Simla, the lull of the dusk, life's awaking at Dawn, the rains washing the tired day, the crystal-clarity of the day's sky, the clouded night and what not- nothing has escaped the artist's ken, wherever and whatever he sees, he finds something to gratify his senses. But the process does not stop here. Via this senses, these sights and many more do crep into his soul and bring and take a certain shape, which he ultimately carries on to a canvas in varied colours and playful paints.

One of the striking features of this series is an all pervading, ever widening perspective which is in exact correspondence to the natural sights of a hilly region like Simla. Anupam has successfully endeavoured to catch up a this perspective in almost all the paintings exhibited under the present title. The perspective merges, widens, recedes into the background and thus entraps the onlooker, too, in its entails. The spectator soon becomes an active participant in the life of the 'mighty world of eye and ear'. Nature's monologue in transformed into a dialogue and the artist plays the hidden liasion. However, he rarely tries to interpret and resolve the mystery of Nature for he is no philosopher but a pure aesthete and too great an artist to do so. These paintings do bring out the human faith in the power and beauty of Nature. As such, they are not painted canvases and a camera work: rather they epitomize the artist's faith and thus spring forth from his soul's innermost recesses. This beside, the present series also impresses upon the onlooker the idea that for Anupam, art is a quest, a discovery and an invention, too - all three at the same time. The quest is for the power and beauty of Nature; the discovery is th one of his soul's identificaiton with Her and the invention is of that art which 'age cannot wither, nor custom stale her infinite variety'.