My Experience with Drawing........
They call it drawing. I really have no name for it. It's a compulsion, an itch. The more I scratch, the more I want to continue. It is enjoyable but it can also hurt when nothing emerges but an incomprehensible mess. Was I taught to draw? Silly question really. How can one manipulate a compulsive itch. Try and stop it and see what happens. Bad temper, depression and a sickness of spirit. Emptiness.Click on the image to view enlarged version
"Bandwalla", mixed media on paper, 54 x 74cm.Jan.2000
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Untitled, mixed media on paper, 54 x 74cm.Jan.2000
A pencil or a crayon might help. Sounds as if these implements are analgesics of sorts. I start to scratch the surface of a piece of paper. Soon enough, the pencil moves as if of it's own accord pulling my hand this way and that rather like a pencil in a planchet creating a nervous scribble meaningful only to the directing ghost.
Click on the image to view enlarged version "Episode from Mahabharat", mixed media on paper,
54 x 74cm. Jan.2000
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"Miss Amery", mixed media on paper; 54 x 74cm. Jan.2000
My gaze is independent of my pencil holding hand. I think I could shut my eyes without ceasing to scribble. Someone says "A map of an unknown galaxy"....."The pencil has become an extension of the nerves of my hand" and other such nonsense. Sustained scribbling achieves only a small inroad which may dislodge an image. Sounds dramatic doesn't it? It isn't always so. I would fain repeat the contours of a subject I've tackled before, which is not to say that I would not go back to the same subject in the hope of discovering another dimension.
Click on the image to view enlarged version "Boys eating melon", mixed media on paper,
54 x 74cm; Jan.2000
Click on the image to view enlarged version "The drunken poet", mixed media on paper;
54 x 74cm, Jan.2000.I have painted and drawn Bandwallahs but that's not reason enough for them not to appear again, this time shaped by crayons. They turn into areas of colour and have little correspondence withthose who instigated them. Their cacophny too turns into a clash of colours which I think is more coherent to the senses. Some people would have me disassociate the drawing completely from the actual Bandwallahs to preserve some kind of "Purity". I cannot think that this kind of "Purity" can add any kind of richness, so I do not obliterate my sources nor the transformations they undergo on canvas or on paper. It follows that my subject matter is of importance to me and is not fortuitous. Dependent on this choice are the means which will reveal it. Nor is it ever certain that every venture will be successful. What is certain, and this gives me some comfort, is that a moment of my life was spent in such absorption which bypassed Time.
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"The scribe", mixed media on paper; 54 x 74cm, Jan.2000
If at the end of it, what I make I made finds acceptance with someone, it confirms to me that I'm not alone. The drawing becomes a ground for sharing an experience.
-Krishen Khanna.
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