Harmeet Singh Sethi, CEO Aura Art
- Tracks the Rise of Artist Sidharth
With Sidharth past, present and future coexist. He experiments with
forms, images and textures old and new to tell his story, which is often
closely linked to classical Indian literature, folk ballads, mythology,
music and poetry.
His journey into mysticism began from early childhood. Zen, Sufism, Osho,
Guru Granth Sahib, Tibetan Buddhism and the compassion of Madonna are
the many facets of religious thought that have influenced him. There is
a very strong spiritual core, which is part of the fabric of his being
and is reflected in all his paintings. His work is sophisticated, yet
intense …a rare cross-cultural success. Each painting has a very personal,
spiritual experience for the viewer, which the artist hopes will lead
you to your universal understanding of human culture.
Born in 1956 in Punjab, India, Sidharth started painting sign boards while
still at school, but later progressed by learning the Thangka painting
technique from the Thibetan monks at Dharmashala, where he spent six years.
After his graduation from the College of Art in Chandigarh, he joined
a group of painters called ‘Solids’ and exhibited the ‘White Space’ series.
Eager to learn different techniques, he studied glass blowing in Sweden,
techniques of Madhubani paintings, Kashmir Papier-mâché Crafts and other
south Asian and oriental techniques from various master craftsmen.
As an accomplished alchemist and
conceiver of distinctive palettes, Sidharth produces his own pigments
from natural vegetable sources and minerals, clays, organic chromatics
and inorganic pigments. Throughout his travels across India and elsewhere
in the world, he visits local markets, herbal suppliers, sources of plant
and sea organisms, to enrich the storehouse which characterizes his studio.
From a roadside vendor to a traditional trader of Silk Route spices and
products, to paint sellers, each corner proffers potential elements. Trees,
leaves, barks, berries, loam and lichen, herbs, lava, coral, pearl dust,
moon rock, pollen, stamens, iron ores, rarefied and mundane, this endless
bouquet of possible hues line his walls. Dexterous with any material ground
he chooses.
For centuries, poets all over the world have been writing about the rhythmic
changes and evolving patterns of the seasons. Besides our own literary
masters, we find poets across the Orient from Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Sri Lanka, Thailand, China and the Zen Masters, attempting to describe
in words, the constantly evolving seasons and the cosmological changes.
Sidharth’s search in this domain began around the end of 2005, when he
attempted to portray it at various levels and in different forms through
his art and imagination. To him, human awareness, human consciousness
changes with seasons…it finds its own way as the season evolves through
his work, his search for that elusive peace, the awakening, a state where
one is at peace with one’s environment and with ones own self, a state
where there is no joy…no pain…no anger…no hatred… a state where one is
free of ‘self’… A state of quiet acceptance and awareness.
While working on this theme of “Barah-Maha” (twelve months), it has been his aspiration to portray the life forms distinctive to each season – be it birds, animal, human or flora-fauna and it’s changing landscape, the experiences and ebb and flow of life. In the rendition of each season, he has tried to source the colors from the flora and fauna peculiar to that time of the year. Well known arts writer and curator Sushma K Bahl very aptly states and I quote “Sidharth seems to have found his nemesis in the vast and varied repertory around Baramasa or Baramaha that continues to resonate though his work. Rotating around the twelve months or seasons of the year, his ensemble in the series runs through most of his creativity of the last decade or so. In terms of its philosophy, aesthetics and matrix the work springs from the artist’s learnings of Guru Granth Sahib and other mystical traditions of the world.”
On his most recent body of work Sushma ji comments “Retaining his distinct
thrust for lyrical figuration in balanced compositions with fine textures
and renderings in delicate palette, comes his current work with its thrust
focusing on the cow. Instead of the human figure it is now the grace and
beauty of the cow with its own character and compulsions that inundate
his art frame.”
Dedicating the series to legendry Manjeet Bawa who mastered the art of
painting cow in its myriad forms and romantic moods, Sidharth attempts
to re-locate the sacred symbol into a contemporary context by placing
it in today’s urban setting.
The artist is an engaging story teller and each of his creations is immersed in layered and folded narratives that try to evoke a long forgotten moment/memory or present a thought or an idea or bring up an issue confronting the individual or society. The checkered life and predilections of this highly driven artist, thinker, musician and kind hearted persona- born and reborn – from a vagabond to a Buddhist monk and finally an artist of international repute- seem to have influenced the metaphors of his art and shape his aesthetics that resurrect his amazingly varied personal experiences, his intuitive and humanist fortitude and spiritual bent of mind, crisscrossing many interesting turns and twists.
He has held eighteen solo shows and has participated in eighty group shows in India, UK, Sweden and USA since 1976. Receiving various awards for his works, including from the British Council. His works have been acquired by the Indian Government Museum, the British Council in Delhi, the Punjab Lalit Kala Akademi, the British, Mexican and Swedish Ambassadors, the Düsseldorf Museum: Heda, Sweden and several industrial groups in India and abroad.
He is the author of Neti Neti and has made fifteen documentaries on Indian Temples, Art and Architecture.
