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.
