Invented Landscapes

The landscapes by Paramjit Singh reaffirm his painterly prowess and a rare feel for the textures of nature, writes Nirupama Dutt

The colour of the earth is a yellow-gold. Auburn shadows fall on frail trees that elegantly sway with the breeze. Patches of dark green make the suggestion of a wild forest. The sky is filled with clouds and looks dark and promising. In this painting, titled Monsoon Light, Paramjit Singh, the master of stroke, captures a rare moment of a sunshine shower that probably would not last beyond half an hour. But that quaint twinkling when the clouds and sunrays challenge one another to a game of hide and seek is captured beautifully in rapid brush strokes. It is landscape at it its purest form. No human presence intrudes but, of course, for the viewer who stands gasping at the spectacle of nature recreated by a fine and practiced brush.

Paramjit Singh is famous for the magical quality of his landscapes. His works reaffirm his painterly prowess and the ease with which he is able to translate nature into oil on canvas. He is a landscape artist with a difference, for—but for his student days—he does not go to a spot and paint it at a given time. His landscapes are the result of a long communion with nature. He has absorbed nature deeply ad when he faces the empty canvas, the conscious and the subconscious combine in creating these ecstatic landscapes of the mind. Talking of his works, he says:  “These are invented landscapes no doubt but the feel of nature is real.”

The love for nature took root in his mind when he was a young boy. Paramjit Singh, who grew up in a large joint family in Amritsar, in the 1940s, recalls: “My father was a religious person. My childhood was enriched by the stories he would tell me. I remember when he told me stories from the life of Guru Nanak, I would imagine a landscape. This so because Nanak was a traveller and the anecdotes from his life included rivers, rocks, mountains and the sky. Also, as children, we were mostly outdoors as there were no televisions and computers to trap us at home.” Bathing at the tube-well in the fields as a young boy or cycling long distances as a student of Khalsa School, Amritsar, was among his main joys. This passion for outdoors continued when he joined the Delhi Polytechinc School of Arts in 1953. “It was a beautiful un-crowded Delhi and we would cycle on the ridge or walk through the wilds which were later tamed into the Buddha Jayanti Gardens. The ruins and old monuments were another attraction,’’ says the painter.

The environment at the art school was very charged ad the faculty included famed artists like B.C. Sanyal, Biren De, Sailoz Mukherjee, Dhan Raj Bhagat and Jaya Appaswamy. His college-mates included Suraj Ghai, R K Dhawan, Eric Bowin and, of course, Arpita Singh, who was to become his muse and later his partner in life. “It was the right guidance and the right climate which we found as students and this helped us to pick up the right nuances which were to bloom later. We were indeed well-bitten by the art bug,” says Paramjit Singh. It is here that the world of art opened up before this Amritsar lad who was among the first crop of painters of post-1947 India. Like most artists of the time, he too was deeply influenced by the French Impressionists and in his case the influence went into shaping his early works.

Paramjit Singh did figurative work and was acknowledged as a fine portrait painter in his early days. But when he set o to become a professional painter, it was nature that inspired him the most. “Art has to become a part of you. And truly with me are the rivers, the fields, the rocks and the skies. I have never ceased to enjoy the mysteries and marvels of nature,” says the artist.

Primarily he is a colourist but in the early days, he painted some still life juxtaposed with elements of nature or rocks looming over the landscapes, Gradually, however, the sheer pleasure of colour and brush-work took over. Commenting on his work, fellow artist and a former colleague at Jamia Milia, A Ramachandran, says, “It is natural that in the art arena of today’s cerebral circus, Paramjit Singh’s paintings do not receive the attention they deserve because they are pure works of art. Rising above the thin dividing line between realism and abstraction, Paramjit Singh transforms his picture-space into an animated painting-space with an abundance of brushstrokes which have become his signature.”

Paramjit Singh has been witness to the New Delhi art scene since the 1950s and he takes the changes in his stride. “One does miss the good old days but then the interest in art has grown and the number of galleries and shows is phenomenal. In the early days, we ever missed a show and these days it is impossible to see everything,” he points out.

On his marriage to Arpita, one of the country’s leading painters, he says that it has been held together by art. “We have appreciated each other’s work and even offered critical appraisal when required,” he says. Interestingly, a couple of years ago an art gallery invited couples to create one work. The painting by the Singhs showed a couple on a bench in a garden and an aeroplane flying across the sky. Paramjit Singh says, “The aeroplane, the couple and the bench were Arpita’s, I provided only the sky and the patch of green.” Well, the patch of green is certainly his forte and he knows how to make it work, by the lake, along the river, in the waves or in the monsoon light.