FUN WITH FABRICS: ....OF MEMORIES OLD & NEW

Hand written scripts or calligraphy is a very old form of expression that has gained the status of art. Starting from Chinese calligraphy, Islamic calligraphy, Sanskrit manuscripts to the wall graffiti, each of them have a beauty and charm of their own.
As an individual I am an introvert and I dwell in my memories; and this fact reflects on the surfaces prominently. I always try to pen down my memories in my paintings. Memories become hazy, blurred and faint with the passage of time. The way memories get washed away with time, one layer of memory overlaps the other, the layers of text in the designs also get overlapped on each other.
It must be mentioned that calligraphy has a context of its own. It always carries a message. Sometimes it is religious; sometimes it is just decorative, while sometimes it is just a protest. Calligraphy has been used to make surfaces earlier also but the texts used here in my designs it is not used as a script but just as a medium for building up the surface texture. I intentionally made portions of my designs non readable (illegible) because the texts here is used as texture and not as script. The texts used in the designs do not have any message as such but is just a reflection of memories. Typed font could have also been used, but hand written script has been used to bring a more personal and intimate feel to the designs.
The way memories get washed away the surfaces also have a much eroded look. The way we forget only certain parts and remember only certain parts of events in our life; the text also gets hidden at some places and pops out at some places. Somewhere its legible, while at other places its non readable. Often it’s prominent like fresh memory, while often it’s blurred and hazy like some long lost childhood memory. Memories often come back to us as dreams and there is no sequence of order in dreams. The texts also do not follow any order. It’s random and order less. The background and foreground is also not clearly demarcated in the designs. Its very unclear and is interwoven and entangled with one another. Like dreams do not have specific boundaries, like dreams just float around in ones mind; the texts also are not bound clearly. Like sometimes memories come back as dreams and again dreams become memories the texts also float between the foreground and the background…. In between the past and the present, in between the two worlds…. the world of reality and the world of dreams.
A lot of blacks, whites and reds have been used. Life is full of sadness with transitory flashes of happiness. The blacks and whites are the colourless, less joyful periods of life while the splashes of reds are the most joyful moments of life. Like life is a crossroad where sorrows and joys juxtapose the canvases here are a reflection of life where all the moments of joy and sorrow amalgamate.
The method of screen printing itself allows us to overlap screens and in the process colours. This method has been used here as an advantage to literally overlap colours.

“Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.(Diane Ackerman,A Natural History of the Senses.)

“And even if you were in some prison, the walls of which let none of the sounds of the world come to your senses - would you not then still have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure-house of memories?
(Rainer Maria Rilke)

“It is singular how soon we lose the impression of what ceases to be constantly before us. A year impairs, a luster obliterates. There is little distinct left without an effort of memory, then indeed the lights are rekindled for a moment - but who can be sure that the Imagination is not the torch-bearer?”
(Lord Byron)