Graphic painterliness
There is something gentle and touching in the works of Margaret Henry displayed currently at the Time & Space gallery (October 4 to 12). It is not just the endearing fact that the British artist studied print-making only after her retirement and practices it as a recording and evocation of her reflections and moods around her travelling to different countries.

The array of subdued, pastel images of often nuanced hues offers a sense of calm focus and genuineness of the effort. On the other hand yet, the prints do not reach further, and irrespective of their form and reference remain limited by their illustrative, rather than expressive or conceptual, relationship with the sights that stimulated them. Although the artist does not consciously follow particular styles, she then bases on certain broad aesthetic ways, too familiar to convey the depth of intimate experiences. Thus, the images stay on the cultured surface of things.

   Henry knows her monotype technique well being able to generate a variety of subtle colours, linear motif, tonalities and textures and emphasise their specific painterly qualities by using shallow to pronounced relief and concavity effects. The delicate tactility of the works derives from graded pressing of the coloured surface of objects on paper which so absorbs their properties.

The artist goads the method to yield painterliness normally associated with oils and water-colours. The impact of the former can be seen in the impressions of old arched buildings which suggest the traditional elements of aquarelle, like flowing and bleeding or the luminosity of the uncovered ground along shapes.

Whereas such works have a pleasant impact of light but conventional realistic portrayal, the “Creation” and “Genesis” pieces which were inspired by astronomical photographs, transform those into abstractions of a déjà vu character. They are certainly very nice in their softly spreading dynamism and latent turbulence, their shadowy areas that turn radiant and translucent, however not more that that.

 Effects close to those of oils on canvas are achieved in the images of aged doors and windows set in worn out walls, where among raised pigments even meaty trails of brush strokes are conjured. One may respond to such works with less appreciation because of some excess and messiness they exhibit. The best may be the “Fire Bird” image which finely balances and interconnects its linear-descriptive elements and textural, concavely impressed, painterly ones towards an understated expressiveness. Quite successful too is the artist’s global “Odyssey” transposed into an inner, metaphoric one as the aorta as “The Tree of Life”.

Child spirit
The charity exhibition organised for the benefit of The Concerned for Working Children (Time & Space, September 30) had perhaps the deservedly needed saleability logic behind it. Nevertheless, if considered from the art perspective, it offered a gamut of colourful conventionality.

JMS Mani was generously present in many rustic scenes on canvas and on paper, the whole monotonously repeating hardly differing variants of his mainstream topics and takes.

 The single painting by S G Vasudev may have evoked a similar response, being also steeped in a modernist-derived pleasantness. Ramesh Rao did show a change of idiom, but one as dependent on conventional and commercially aimed form as his previous endeavours.

The remaining painters echoed their seniors oscillating between patterned landscape abstractions and design-like, ethnic mannerisms with a dose of half-hearted contemporary attempts. By comparison, the efforts of the children at least had a feel of sincerity and energy despite the cliché ways they were made to follow.

Random range
Another exhibition meant for a lofty cause was brought to WelcomArt, Windsor Bengaluru (September 21 to 29) by the Foundation for Restoring Human Dignity. Except for K T Shiva Prasad’s intensely realistic portrait drawing and Ravikumar Kashi’s colourful variant of Mumbai realism, the collection comprised of very many very conventional styles: from indulgent, formalistic abstracts and their landscape-evoking versions to modernised and lightened descriptions, to many variants of ethnic stylisation and attempts at relatively contemporary ways.

Among the more cultured instances here could be counted Soumya Manjunath and Pratibha Singh.

Painterly design
Sudhir Galwalkar, a young artist from Bangalore, displayed his “Doors and Windows” series recently at the Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath (till September 27). The often large canvases of saturated, bright colours caught one’s attention at first glance not being able, however, to sustain the same over a longer contact.

The painter certainly knows his technique well and seems to use it with a degree of forcefulness, lightness and freedom. These abilities yet, are steered towards a somewhat easy attractiveness within a theme that is supposed to give insight into the authenticity of the actual that becomes transformed by a more distanced and abstracted evocation. So, the impact is restricted to the strong decorativeness of the surface. Between the residue of direct realism and the vast expanses of abstract colour fields there is a feel of rooted yet shifting dynamism accentuated by small, vibrant markings.

The viewer appreciates the facility but becomes disappointed by the quicky effect.

Formulae
A similar impression came, but through less spectacular means, while watching the “Festival Mood” display at Lakshana (September 12 to 28). Of the three participants M S Murthy’s abstracted Ganesha and landscape atmosphere imagery at least had the traces of a sure hand, sporadically creating a sparingly suggested, meditative atmosphere.

A J Stalin’s sceneries structured of a soft abstract geometry were bright but rather loud. M Pakkiri’s folkloristic scenes betrayed a mannered dependence on densely ornate elements of traditional southern painting. Each participant so revealed a formulaic repetitiveness.