*CLOWN HEADS

Pen and ink on paper

I started working on this series of drawings on paper based on my personal experiences in various forms. Street urchins forced to perform acts of jugglery in front of the public just to earn a piece of bread (roti). Even doing terribly difficult and fantastic acts of acrobatics. Small kids with an innocent smile on their face doing the impossible. Farmers committing suicide, with debt to follow up by the helpless family. Homeless on the streets of our cities. Migrants with punctured dreams. All unsung souls who die, trying to achieve that minimum sanctity of humanness. They are my inspiration, my ‘CLOWNS’. The golden sword or dagger has its own role to play. It gives judgement. It takes the test of purity. The golden sword is alive, does its own tricks. The clowns are tragic, funny, nauseating, cruel, sad, happy and above all humane. I want to put some questions of important issues through my art. In this series of ‘CLOWN HEADS’, the question of minimum humane existence is dissected in different forms. The clowns are faces among us, seen everyday in different forms and situations.
The series of ‘CLOWN HEADS’ stands on an understanding of daily exploration of our soulless journey towards attaining nothingness. “It’s a small world”, its an old joke, but you wouldn’t want to paint it. Or rather want to paint some crucial moments from its vastness. The ‘CLOWN HEADS’ are visual traces of imperfect frameworks for negotiating the complexity (and perhaps meaninglessness) of existence – a symbolic vastness within the greater vastness of this physical world. It’s a galactic pile-ups of reality – meditating prisms to which someone, somewhere, is still clinging. The elements facilitate engagement at all levels of consciousness, being provocative in nature.

‘CLOWN HEADS’ series is based on our inner turmoil’s and its struggle with various elements, influenced my forces of society, norms of survival, rules of coordinated etiquette’s, economic pitfalls, political lies, back stabbing idiots, race to success…what not may be the right question.

One might ask why only heads…well, the head including the face is the real mirror of our soul. We read hundreds of faces in our daily life. Still we remember few, sometimes none. The head or face strikes you first and has its own story to tell. ‘CLOWN HEADS’ is an assemblage of strange contradictions of contemporary life. Some faces will remind you of the friend you just met on the streets or may be the stranger who just made you laugh with his uncommon acts. Among millions of faces, some are truly memorable, for reasons unknown to us. Just too hard to erase from ones memory. Why we treasure them is truly mysterious. That unknown connection maybe known as human bonding, so prehistoric yet surviving the troubles of our time. This element of mystery make our life naturally liveable. That slight twist of eyebrows, that cunning smile, the pale look, happy faces hiding everything beneath them, the anger blowing hot faces, old and tampered faces and some many of them. Scratched, curved, chiseled, moistured, painted, pampered, injured, glorified and drowned in pain, faces unlimited.

These ‘CLOWN HEADS’ are common faces with uncommon stories carved on them.

Raw in appearance and bold to the core. The colourful apppearance is deceiving to our eyes. Painted to hide something…mysterious. Clown paints his face to appear funny or appropriate for the show. The show is supreme for him, an every day challenge. Here some accessories are part of the show, the golden swords, the trapeze, the umbrella, the bicycle, the arrows, the ball, the ladder, the golden daggers and the golden guns. They keep popping up here and there to test the clown’s faith and to make the show more thrilling. ‘CLOWN HEADS’, simply put are just spontaneous images of raw experiences. Hope and failure, life and death, are spread across the lines and colours of this series of work on paper. The material used is least important. The cause becomes supreme, transforming your routine space and time to a new level.

The clown heads have another aspect to them. The Buddha eyes with dream like aura make you think why peace suddenly. Well the clown is meditating, one with the self. He is vulnerable but determined. He is on the path of self exploration to explore the world in a more divine way. The void in him is taking a form of solace. The monk of his soul is questioning the meaning of worldly encounters. Ready to take on pain with very little effort. Finding the Shangri-La within oneself is the endless journey of all humans.

My clown heads will make you travel through many aspects and feelings of a clown’s (nayak) life during and after the show. It’s for the viewer to explore. Let it be mystified for time to reveal its true meaning.

(*Upcoming Series...on its way!)