Finesse at his fingertips

‘Native Lineage’ — a solo art exhibition by Raja Subrata Bose, who is an eye specialist by profession but has a passion for art — is being held at Krantz Art Gallery, Gurugram. The exhibition showcases various flavours of the hills, valleys, birds and flowers, and Bose has captured their beauty extraordinarily well.

Speaking about the inspiration behind his works, Subrata says, “As my whole working life I have been among the blissful nature in Northeast India, the virgin hills and valleys have made an everlasting impact on me. My work highlights landscapes with a flavour of the region.”

Subrata’s paintings are mostly landscapes with natural light and the mediums Bose uses for them include oil, pastel and acrylic (which happens to be his favourite). In this exhibition, Bose has used smartphones as his digital painting tool. “I will be displaying some of my digital drawings made by this simple method,” says the artist.

Being a self-taught artist, Bose enjoys drawing spontaneously and says, “To me, painting is an expression of all my feelings from the depth of my heart, poured on canvas, just like cavemen trying to communicate on cave walls using anything and everything.” He also believes that the healing power of art is always inspired by nature.

Iqbal Krishna, the curator of the show compares Subrata’s artwork to the French phenomenon of ‘En plein air’. “Bose’s paintings are mostly from the times when he went out of his clinic to attend to his patients. He would observe the outdoor forest, foliage, flora and fauna and immediately capture those landscapes by finger drawing on his smartphone and then recreate it on the canvas,” explains Iqbal. He feels that this makes Bose the only artist in India to follow the ‘En plein air’ phenomenon of the 19th century.

One painting, which Bose highlights from the exhibition, is titled ‘India, 1947 #refugees #wound so deep that it bleeds even now’ and says that this painting is somehow different from others. “I was born in 1957, ten years post Independence. As I grew up, I saw people and families who were uprooted during partition. Even today, after so many years, this refugee status ensures these very people continue to suffer,” he laments.