Asma Menon’s bright canvases with a touch of metallic tinge tell you many stories. For a moment one might wonder what is so unusual about a colourful cock. But then how many have seen a beauty like that of tail feathers curving to touch the crown and the crown perked making the cock strut around with pride. In other canvases she paints a view of a landscape as seen from one’s window. The images are so real and thought-provoking that the onlooker wants to be a part of the frame and plonk in the quaintness of the scenery. Is that slightly bigger canvas, ‘the tree of life’? Asma ruminates:: “In a way one can say that. The reason why I made that canvas is to depict the lives other human beings and they are a part of nature. It is recognition of life. The metallic colours I used were an inspiration from what I saw at Rome; the mosaic tiles there appealed to me more than anything else. So that way, my painting is also about life’s journey.”
She best describes her thoughts, ‘Trees, animals, as well as human and divine figures appear to fluctuate and melt in her images creating a unique solution that unites the past with the present with no apparent contrast.’
Asma is showcasing her works with Rekha Rao at a show titled Double Helix at Kalakriti Art Gallery in aid of Heal-a-Child. Double Helix is a pair of parallel helices intertwined about a common axis. Both Asma and Rekha have a similar meaning to their works; they talk about the cycle of life.
Rekha’s soft shades on her canvas have a comfort feeling. The tones of muted browns and bronze infused into woolly, snowy puffs of white show another cycle of life. She has depicted water in most of her works and explains, “Once again it is for existence or sustenance of life. It is the most important element for survival, yet we are all deprived of it. We are pumping mother earth dry and thinking of a glorious life. What are we heading to?” she rues. Born to hope and imagine a new society in independent India, she feels a sense of loss and sadness for a brutally battered environment. “Memory and experience has thrown up multiple images and perspectives from time to time. Unimaginable growth in population, frenzied greed and selfishness leading us on the path of self-destruction,” she explains. Her hopes for a new society have gone awry.
Colour is the core of her paintings. She hopes her paintings will communicate, energise and restore some semblance of equilibrium between man and nature as art alone can bridge this chasm. To her, freedom means watching a flock of birds fly. She says, “An ethereal feeling envelops me, as I stand on terra firma and let my dreams be in the realm of ‘dreams.’”
The duo are planning to take the association forward and showcase their works in Bangalore, Chennai and Delhi.
