thoughts after a long tour

Have come back from a long tour of Manali, Dharamshala and Dalhousie.

All these places in Himalayas have a vastly different scenery than Mumbai city where i reside. What are the thoughts when one leaves for a long painting tour and what are things we bring back?

There are certain obvious things we look for and some not so obvious.

A different place has a different scenery which will make any landscape by any artist look different than what he does in his own town or village. He may use different palette and different sizes and all that. A seashore dweller will run to mountains.

And there are more subtle norms. Each place has a individual soul and character which we aim for. The atmosphere and light of a place in Himalayas has to seep in to your work. Architecture also adapts to that atmosphere so does our works.

But all these thoughts do occur to any sensible painter of landscape sometime or the other, though not in as many words! But i honestly believe that landscape is not in the scene but in the mind and heart of the painter. Otherwise how can paintings from a same spot by different painters differ so vastly and two works by same painter on same spot differ too! And though spots do change there is a characteristic brand of each artist which shows through. So why we run to far away places?

Boredom of painting same city is obvious answer and obviously mediocre n wrong! Otherwise Russian artist Nicholus Roerich who after settling in Naggar near Manali, would have gone somewhere else after few years, say Mumbai!!! But he didnt and we run each year! To search? Then why not search inside? My honest answer will be to look for an impetus. A different locale will not only pose technical and timing problems which include sleep and food timings :-), but also of compositions and treatment. We all aim to make new breakthrough of some kind.

So i felt two ways to do this. One is to carry the compositional experiment you did in Mumbai to a vastly new locale like Dalhousie and try to paint those locales in that 'new' way. It will not only polish off rough edges in your new styles but also bring out new facets. And make you confident that your experiment was not spot specific. It was heart specific and inside you and not in a city.

And secondly when you visit a new place, search for new visual imagery on paper. When you encounter a different place and find a new compostion or maybe a technique, then go deeper. Find the thread which doesnt depend on that scenery but it depends on your understanding of landscape as an art form and bring it back. If you find a new path which leads you to your own backyard, your own studio, then the trip was worth it!!!