Who is an artist? You’ve checked out art exhibitions by students, art teachers, homemakers, and they’re all artists in the context of the art they create. So, why did my jaw drop when I received the invitation to Kota Neelima’s show of 30 paintings, ‘Sliver of Time’?

Kota Neelima has been a journalist for more than 12 years. Hers is a byline you have followed for a while. And thus, the surprise of her art show. But Neelima does not see it that way. The art, in a way, has happened because of  journalism, not in spite of it, she explains.

Somewhere, the exposure to ground realities that the journalist is witness to, stirred the artist and author in her. Her first novel ‘Riverstones’, triggered by the number of farmer suicides, was published last March.
Her first exhibition was last year. Tentative, yet a positive beginning, since she received words of encouragement from stalwarts like Anjolie Ela Menon. “Please keep painting the way you do,” art scholar and poet Padmashree Keshav Malik told her.

Neelima did. The result is this exhibition, with canvasses created over the last two years.
Writes Elizabeth Rogers, who curated ‘Sliver of Time’, “The artist speaks of kaala, the timelessness of her work… These works conjure a momentary pause, as if between breaths…”

The naturescapes express Neelima’s inner quiet through various layers. And yet, she assures you, she is a restless person, constantly searching for rest. The peace from her paintings is “a longer peace” than her other work has given her.

In some canvasses, the imagery predominates. For example, the lotuses. And yet, the treatment, the composition and the colours make a world of difference. Transcendence, for instance, the treatment is virtually spiritual, and the result is a powerful translucence. 

Neelima has been painting “on and off” for a while now, but could not put together an exhibition till last year. Today, the brush has triumphed over the pen. Somewhere along the line, she realised, “these are two boats,” taking a deicision to step onto the creative boat with canvas and brush. Art has brought with it a happiness, a serenity that reflects on the paintings, in the luminosity of the aquas and blues. Even when the imagery is similar, colours make so much of the difference in the viewer’s appreciation: Dusk, with its purples and browns, has about it a pensive quality while the yellows of Shallow Morning Light brings the news of a new day born.

Neelima prefers to draw in-situ, as in the seascape done in Sri Lanka, or by taking in “what I want to see,” and sketch and paint on her return, “which is how you differentiate between what you perceive and what you see.” The shutter of her mind’s eye clicks away memories she wants to capture forever. Perhaps that is why she believed she ought to share the exhibition with a photographer.

Among the canvasses are 20 photographs by Anuj Parti. A visit to his studio for shoots of products gives a peek into the world of a sensitive photographer. What he chooses to exhibit, even in his studio, are people and things frozen in a instant of inspiration. His naturescapes are in harmony with Neelima’s artistry and Parti captures moments from the natural world around us which we have virtually ceased to notice. Clouds, trees, the breeze, sunlight catch his fancy.

Event Horizon, for instance, has dark clouds through which tears a sliver of light. In other frames, he plays with technique. The Return immortalizes a moment when a ‘chunni’ billows. And yet, he does not allow the technique to predominate.

“None of these is digitally manipulated. All I have done is to control the light and manipulate the shots,” says Anuj. The last word goes to Untitled 2 that recreates the illusion of water on the sky. “I’ve forgotten how I did that!” laughs Anuj. I guess he likes to leave you with the mystery rather than spell out the magic and kill the joy of wonder.

Both artists work in personal spaces peopled more by the tranquility of nature than by human beings. Little wonder, then, that you come away with the thought that you must return another day to soak in some more of that quietude.