Ganga-Spiritual Sojourn is an epic work by artist-poet-thinker-writer and song maker Sidharth who has toiled for four decades understanding the rudiments of art specially the miniature techniques of the Thangkas and the realist idiom in art. This monumental canvas that measures 65”x 210” is a panoramic painting that is made from silver leaf and mineral pigments created by the artist himself.
“My work is about the journey from without and within,” says Sidharth. My journey is about the destination as well as the many metaphorical moments and moods and memories that are attached with the river that enfolds both the living and the dead,’ he affirms. “Ganga is more than a holy river.
It is a collection of contradictions and commentaries-it is the divination of great histories and legends and the music of civilizations that lived and died on its banks. For me the psyche of the Ganga lives in the people I met, in the birds I watched, in the animals I observed. Every living thing had its own poetry-it shared the lyrical flow of the river. It shared the same linguistic and imagetic preoccupations of the lives led along its journey.”
Curator Uma Nair states. “Sidharth understands in great depth how aesthetic transformations progress in both sculpture and painting. His paintings should be seen as consciously composed aesthetic wholes, permeated with an awareness of structure and organisation. The sight of these ice capped mountains with their subtle luminosity, makes the whole scene so surreal seemingly living out the centuries -as the river Ganga flows in notes of spiritual sanctity in sweet harmony”.
The work reads like a horizontal scroll that has within elements from nature as well little human details. The crow-the temple-the red faced monkey-the fossils of skeletons-the rams that stand and speak to each other-each being has his own place. The last part of the journey holds the beauty of the trees and crevices and habitation that happens in the river’s journey to its final destiny . And in each part of the painting there exists a formal dance of stillness and movement.
“My work is about the journey from without and within,” says Sidharth. My journey is about the destination as well as the many metaphorical moments and moods and memories that are attached with the river that enfolds both the living and the dead,’ he affirms. “Ganga is more than a holy river.
It is a collection of contradictions and commentaries-it is the divination of great histories and legends and the music of civilizations that lived and died on its banks. For me the psyche of the Ganga lives in the people I met, in the birds I watched, in the animals I observed. Every living thing had its own poetry-it shared the lyrical flow of the river. It shared the same linguistic and imagetic preoccupations of the lives led along its journey.”
Curator Uma Nair states. “Sidharth understands in great depth how aesthetic transformations progress in both sculpture and painting. His paintings should be seen as consciously composed aesthetic wholes, permeated with an awareness of structure and organisation. The sight of these ice capped mountains with their subtle luminosity, makes the whole scene so surreal seemingly living out the centuries -as the river Ganga flows in notes of spiritual sanctity in sweet harmony”.
The work reads like a horizontal scroll that has within elements from nature as well little human details. The crow-the temple-the red faced monkey-the fossils of skeletons-the rams that stand and speak to each other-each being has his own place. The last part of the journey holds the beauty of the trees and crevices and habitation that happens in the river’s journey to its final destiny . And in each part of the painting there exists a formal dance of stillness and movement.