ROADLESS JOURNEY

        I didn’t know that which genre of expressions will I finally choose but from the              childhood the feelings and wistfulness of deprived and strugglers have been in the centre of my activities. When I came to Patna to study, the fascinating city impressed me in many ways. On one side was the world with joy and thrill and frauds of daily life whileas on other side stood the crowd of those people who leave their homes early morning to do hard labour for their survival. Even a low wages work would bring happiness to their faces and the fear of not getting any work was evident from their eyes. Coolies, rickshaw drivers, rag pickers and other such people who played cards under shadow less trees and shouted abuses at one another for just a rupee or a bundle of beedi started affecting my mind and created in me the feelings of opposition and rejection against the web of illusions of mainstream people. No doubt that those faces have wiped away from my memory but their activities are still imprinted in my mind. When I selected colours as my profession, a strange sad comfort came in. I don't know how colours touch the sensibility of eyes of people but I get creative satisfaction when I use them.

Children and women have affected me greatly. The images of women have impressed me and led me to know and draw them. At one level, a section of humans and vagabond animals are shown living in one system as a compulsion. Things have got mixed so much that when I try to separate them, they get dissolved again. I am constantly inspired and disturbed by birds-animals and hardworking environment of life of farmers. I am reading the language of furrows of those faces that have a story hidden in them. Having no words to express my emotions properly, I request you to walk forward towards my pictures.

                                                                                 MANISH UPADHYAY

                                                                                              MUMBAI..

Singing paintings of Manish

The young painter Manish Upadhyay has proved himself as an Visual artist who has no dearth of various subjects. The artist does not escape from those experiences of the life and the world which provoke any sensitive artist with a creative restlessness so that he cannot ignore the veins of time.

The paintings of Manish have the specialities with his colour-co-ordination and it becomes more important when he uses colours in consonance with the subjects dealt with. The subjects he has selected are in several references the lines of cultural movements going on inside India.  Most of his characters surviving the marginal lives are those who do not prefer begging or any sordid profession even after being broken by the economic system. Thus painting namely “Innocent” is the best example of it.

Manish glorifies labour and catches the actions at various levels of labour-based society. He usually manifests even the sensitive side where an unbreakable inter relation between human and non-human comes to the fore. In a painting of the series through a dog following the rag picking children he has painted in a very subtle manner the in-between relation of those two living beings. This enlightens the memory of the relation between Jhhabra and Halku of Preamchand and the relation of the dogs of wandering story heroes of Charles Dickens and Jack London. But this also contains that before the so-called progress rate of India a very large human community is destined to live such a life which is not better than a dog.

Manish under pretence of the child group playing flute and mridang and the two children putting out to graze the bullocks and riding the back thereof created so many references which are not merely pictures but indicates the whole story hidden in their background. The second important thing is that for these paintings of marginal life Manish has used blue colour which is the colour of Dr. Ambedkar’s movement, this is the colour of ‘Bahujan’ and on this pretence Manish has made the part of his creativity of those community who not only in cast system but also in capitalism they are in the worst condition. Definitely, this is a live evidence of social and political commitment of an artist like Manish.

Manish’s creative faculty is vast and he is very experimentive artist. Not only a labour-based class but re-creation of cultural myth of common women is the brightest part of his creativity.

In the painting “Devi Durga” he has painted the myths of Devi Durga as a modern woman who is of common colour  wearing the salwar suit but she has caught the bridle of a loin . It gives various meanings and also raises the questions of the role of women in a new phase of imperialism. For all these paintings, Manish has used very good texture which not only gives him a separate personality but also provides him a disciplined relation with a brush and canvas.

The works by now indicates the possibilities of the longevity of his works and creation. Definitely he will be honoured as a pioneer artist in the time to come.