There has been an ongoing dialogue in the history of Indian thought between the formless and the manifestation of form. The notion of whether the formless as an overarching immanence that creates the illusion of diverse forms at play as a part of the perceptual world or is an absolute void, sunyata, which dialectically opposes the world of forms is a debate that has dominated philosophic speculations, religious concepts and aesthetic values.

In Seema Ghurayya’s oils on canvas, the dialogue is kept alive. Her abstract, irregularly shaped forms float in empty space. Sometimes, the space is dominated by pure geometry. Sometimes, they are anchored by diagonals or are framed by orchestrated lines. They radiate energy and compel the eye to dwell on the action taking place within the rectangular fields even as the quiet empty space in the background beckons.

Seema graduated and did her masters from the art college at Jiwaji University, Gwalior in 1986. Even while she was in college representational forms and figures held no great interest for her. After her formal training in college, she joined Bharat Bhawan in Bhopal and engaged herself with graphic printmaking. It was during this process that she began to discard representational forms in her work and moved towards greater abstraction.

The extensive use of whites and neutrals in her paintings began in 1994. The paintings are not completely white on white, she points out. There are shades of blues, grays, pale browns with which she creates overlapping or discrete fields of colour. The undercoat is white on which she builds up fields of colours with pale tinges of blues or beiges, over which she applies slightly darker shades and then finishes off with some more white paint. The colours on her canvas are choreographed very subtly. Of her use of white she says, that it is a shade that absorbs all colours within it and yet allows the voice of the artist to be heard. Whereas strong colours assert themselves and distract attention with their stridency, the whites and neutral shades allow you to contemplate on the artist’s voice and vision. The artist will find a way to express himself or herself, will find a way to navigate the challenges of the canvas and paint just as a river creates its own channels when it confronts a difficult terrain, says Seema.

Over more than a decade, Seema has evolved a distinct visual idion. Her experience as a graphic artist has influenced her style. It is interesting that in Bharat Bhawan with J Swaminathan’s encouragement a group of abstract artists flourished in Bhopal – Akhilesh, Yogesh Rawal, Anwar. But Seema’s idiom is quite distinct from all the others. She permits contrary pulls to have free play on her canvases. For instance, the forms including geometric or irregular shapes that she creates on rectangular fields of neutral colours are hard-edged with clear boundary lines but she blurs them with a rubbed layer of thin white paint.

The sense of calm that pervades her canvases painted with muted colours is on the surface only. A closer look and one notices a great deal of activity in the clashing triangles, slashes of white diagonals, series of lines which act as a counterpoint. It is like the earth’s crust firm and stable on the surface but with seething motion hidden in its heart. It needs a contemplative frame of mind for the image to reveal its secret movements. The opposing elements of tranquility and vibrant energy give a metaphysical charge to Seema’s abstractions. She distils the essence of harmony and dissonances in the contradictory dynamics that rule life on earth. Just as sonorous music is created by stringing together musical notes in different tempo, Seema also introduces diverse visual elements to create an image that cloisters within its simple surface, an engaging complexity. It is not surprising, therefore, that like many serious artists, she always listens to music, preferably Hindustani classical, while she is painting.

Seema’s virtuosity in painting lies in her wielding a roller on the canvas. She makes very limited use of brush and the hard edges created by the movement of the roller are softened by gradual variations in colour tones and rubbing a near-dry roller lightly dipped in white paint over the surface making a translucent screen through which the image is glimpsed. There is nothing loud or overt in Seema’s art. Everything is subtle, suggestive, enigmatic. Seema’s experience as a graphic artist offers her techniques for creating understated texture in the painting. In making the forms, she uses linocuts, dips them in paint and places them on the canvas and rubs a roller over it. She sometimes pastes corrugated and other paper and paints over it to create texture. Many of the series of lines observed in the smaller images are a result of the roller loaded with paint moving over the canvas pasted with corrugated paper.

Seema is not given to painterly gestures. Her surfaces are not built up with lavish slatherings of paint. Accident is not a part of her process of creating an image. And yet subconscious impulses find expression in the notations and inscriptions that she scatters over her canvases. These markings are not calligraphic but are made with oil pencils of white and blue colours and occasionally, a surprising dash of bold red. Although they do not represent any tangible symbols and are not metaphoric in content, they are warm, random markings invading the carefully composed, austere images. They are like the impulsive and instinctive marks that a child makes on a blank wall or the paintings made on a cave wall by primitive man. There is a feeling of magic and momentousness in the marks made on an empty surface. For Seema, the notations can be playful, spouting and gushing up like a fountain or pyrotechnic display. Or they can be reclusive, inward-looking, meditative.

Seema’s art achieves infinite variations although she uses a limited range of colours and forms. On her fields of colour, she introduces dialogues between different and often contradictory visual elements achieving intricately diverse results. This reconciling of disparate elements is what gives Seema’s images a distinctive edge. She holds for the viewer the promise of pleasurable discoveries.

Ella Datta
October 2007

About the author

Ella Datta has been writing on art and the cultural scene for more than thirty years. Her comments and columns have appeared in almost all the major national dailies and magazines like Times of India, Hindustan Times, The Economic Times, Business Standard, The Telegraph, The Illustrated Weekly of India and the Bengali newspaper Anandabazar Patrika. She retired a few years back as Senior Assistant Editor of The Telegraph. Though occasionally she contributes to Mint and Art India, she now concentrates on writing books and catalogue essays. She has written on many of the major artists in the country and on different aspects of art history in Bengal. In 1986, for the Visions catalogue, she prepared a definitive timeline of political, economic, art and cultural developments in undivided Bengal and West Bengal in the first eight decades of the 20th century, which contextualized art and art-related developments within a larger canvas.

Ella Datta is the author of Ganesh Pyne: His Life and Times (CIMA, 1998), The Art of A Ramachandran (Roli, 2000), Lines and Colours: Discovering Indian Art (NBT, 2002), A Walk in the Woods: Art of Paramjit Singh (Yoda Press, 2006). Her second book of essays on A Ramachandran will by published by The Guild Art Gallery in December, 2007. Another book on Ganesh Pyne, to be published by Vadehra Art Gallery is being processed. She is currently engaged in writing a book on Arpita Singh and another on Paramjit Singh, both for Vadehra Art Gallery. Datta lives with her family in the outskirts of Delhi.