It’s hard to overlook the science in Ravi Gossain’s art. Geometric patterns collude with bold colours to form meticulous images. No careless strokes, no dull shades and absolutely no nonsense. And like his previous paintings, sunflower dominates larger part of the canvas. Yes, sunflower is his muse. “I didn’t paint for 25 years of my life. I used to be an artist when I was a student. Later, I dropped the brushes to pursue gruhastashram. When I realised I had made enough money, I knew it was time to answer the creative call. It was the image of sunflower that crossed my mind instantly.” he says. “Sunflower is the coded seed of nature. It is coded by nature to respond directly to the origin of life. Figuratively, sunflower represents inner spirit of a humanbeing that opens up,” Ravi Gossain adds.
The circles, lines, squares and rectangles mean a lot more to the artist who has done engineering. But for laymen, they are just beautiful paintings. In sunflower, you see an Asian mind at work. Bold usage of colours add to the drama. He’s a colourist at heart. “Colours add spice to the human drama,” he says. At the same time, the colours are not as bold as he wants them to be. On a constant quest to discover the right pigments, once found, he would want to use them with reckless abandon. And the geometric patterns are part of the process, giving vibrancy to the work in a very controlled fashion.
His masterpiece is definitely the 16 ft panel resplendent in many shades of blue, green, yellow and at times, white. Remove the sunflower from it and it would resemble a Mondrian wall work. Gossain could have stopped at that. Sunflowers were added to ‘bring in a spiritual experience’. Doing a panel of such size is no joke, he admits. “You need to orchestrate the tools in the right mode. It has to flow from one image to another...and complete the picture minus any friction,” Gossain says.
Gossain wants to break the meticulosity of his geometry. He intends to melt it, to break the chord. That, he says, is the only way to embrace abstraction. “It’s a natural progression. To be a good abstract painter, you need to unlearn. Much the same way, you need to unlearn, to paint like a child,” he says. A fully melted painting can blow up his sensibilities. His goal now is to prove that he can do it.
Gossain says figurative painting is his forte. He has also done a series of paintings on Husain. He has not got the sanction to call it by Husain’s name, but the works show Husain in ICU, Husain’s horses and even Husain as a sex machine. He intents to do an exhibition alone on that later. Ask him if Husain is his role model, he says, Husain is a great painter, but even great a performer. “An artist shouldn’t get figurative unless he can do justice to it...precisely the reason why hundreds of artist in India go unrecognised.”. A figurative painting, needless to say, has to be timely too.
Gossain’s collection of painting, ‘Celebrating Space’, would be exhibited at Chitrakala Parishat from March 20-30.
