Painting baby steps

Poornima and Puneeth's First Step is a potpourri of themes and colours

Rich colours and textures, soothing landscapes and nature seemed to be the common factors in Poornima and Puneeth's “First Step” — their first exhibition at the Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath. While Poornima's paintings were almost entirely abstracts on nature, Puneeth's paintings were a motley collection of mature landscapes, some nature, a few Buddhas and a few abstracts.

Poornima, a former student of the short-term course at the Chitrakala Parishath said, “I have always been inspired by nature and flowers and I wanted to depict them in a non-realistic way.” Her paintings stood out from the rest in the sense that most of them are done in a few solid colours — mainly green, blue, black and white. Her abstracts were done in fine lines and look sharp and neat. Poornima's favourite among her works was a painting of a tree silhouetted in black against a green-yellow background, almost as if the night and the tree have exchanged shades. It creates a magical, soothing depth.

Some of her other paintings included tiny, painted masks over a mustard-orange textured background done in knives, adding a bright, rich feel. She has also experimented on golden fabric paints done on pieces of raw silk, inspired from designs on silk saris. The rest of her works included flowers done in black and white and a funky black-and-white stream of hearts with one red heart. It seemed fitting that it was titled ‘One in a million'.

While Poornima's lines were fine and neat, Puneeth's were all over the place creating still landscapes and abstracts in oils, acrylic and textures. Most of his landscapes were done in textures using knives, to add movement and depth to the picture. He had also done a few abstract acrylics of the Buddha that were colourful and bright, unlike the sombre mood that the Buddha's personality usually tends to evoke.

For a 17-year-old who is in the first year of PUC (also a student of Chitrakala Parishath), Puneeth seemed to exhibit great maturity in his portrayal of landscapes through the lines of texture, colours and detail. What stood out among his works is one where he had painted dolphins in the ocean, which was the only painting that belied his youth. His favourite work among those displayed was an abstract of splotches of colour against black; he likes it because it's colourful. My own favourite was one of a house on a hill, done partly in acrylic brushes and partly in texture. It evoked the pristine, primordial silence that is so characteristic of the mountains.