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 Vrindavan Solanki’s magnum opus depicts the ‘romance’ of rural life in his native Saurashtra, where men and women are seen having equal footing in life, musically vivied as man-woman friendship in the three frames; the rst frame has two women and one man; in the second we see three men and the third has two men and one woman. The variance could be a deliberation by the artist to depict social distribution of gender in sylvan societies found expressed in the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata. The grand narrative of life starts in the rst frame where two women speak to a man, which I see as the beginning of Mahabharata where Kunti and Gandhari play a pivotal role. Then the focal point of that epic shifts to Draupadi who negotiates with many men but in vain. The artist suggests the saga of ‘the woman’ continues even in today’ s society, despite her commanding position over men in emotional life. As far as the artist is concerned this is his emblematic representation of Mahabharata, the epic as well as the country today. | |||||||||
| Love in the Dusk and Dawn too by Johny ML | |||||||||
An artist is an itinerant chronicler of his own land; in whichever way he creates his works of art, he could eventually bring a bit of chronicling in those works, at times veiled in metaphors and at other times as the events and people as they are. Vrindavan Solanki is a silent chronicler of his own land, Saurashtra, Gujarat. The village folks, who tend cows and lead a peaceful life, have made Solanki a stickler for their harmonious natural existence. In his works, they appear as ethereal beings clad in beautifully decorated traditional clothes, and the light that emanates from their own interiors, almost erasing the contours of their faces, reminds one of the crystal gazing gypsy tents. There is always a sense of intimacy between malefemale and same gender protagonists. They sit still yet vibrate with a strange energy. The sepia tone that engulfs most of his paintings attributes a quasimythological feel about them. This aspect of Solanki’s works makes the viewer think about the protagonists in them as Krishna-Radha, and Radha and her friends. Though sepia tone pervades in most of his paintings, Solanki does not shy away from using stark and strong colours like blue, green, yellow and red, rendering these paintings absolutely exotic. An alumnus of Baroda Fine Arts Faculty, trained under late NS Bendre and late KG Subramanyan, Solanki has learned the sense of colour from the former and rhythm from the latter. The amount of art history that the Baroda school helps its students ingest has supported Solanki also. Solanki assimilated all that and today stands tall as a Master and is respected all over. Without really pinpointing the light source as in the case of Vermeer, Solanki uses ‘light’ in his works. Similarly, without resorting to chiaroscuro via impasto colour techniques, Solanki gives a ‘Goya effect’ to his images. Vrindavan Solanki’s works impart a sense of lightness; the bearable lightness of being.
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| About Vrindavan Solanki | |||||||||
Untitled Oil on canvas 60 x 28 inches 2015 At the far end of the horizon a storm must be gathering but her heart has already started fluttering thinking of her Lord’s impending arrival | |||||||||
| Aura Art | |||||||||
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