HEM RAJ

PAINTER

ABOUT HEMRAJ

Celebrating the divine, proclaiming rebellion

The first thing you notice about Hem Raj’s paintings titled “Metamorphosing. To Devotion’ is their sheersize. Added to the mammoth look, the paintings are mounted on some exquisite hand-crafted (by the artist himself) wooden frames interspersed with rusty iron and brass patches and chains as are found on some ancient doors. “The frame is the gateway to the sanctum – sanctorum of the divine,” he says. 

            Currently showing at the Shridharani Gallery at Triveni Kala Sangam, the entire range of oils on canvas reminds one of tribal art from Madhya Pradesh. There are massive forms of animals and birds, flowers and tree. The texture is rough – great blobs of paint left to dry within the shapes, signifying the pores of the skin, represented by the outline of powerful forms of animals like elephants because “God is powerful and immense too”. 

          The paintings are devotional, like the bhakti ras found in poetry and music. The style is reminiscent of Sufism, the same abandon and gaiety in reference to the divine who is both the lover and the teacher, the giver and the keeper. Simplicity abounds, again in keeping with the Sufi tradition and tribal art which “the within himself’. 

          Colours are kept to the bare minimum, subdued shades – monochromatic colours – where different shades of the same colour have been used to the maximum effort. No stark colours for Hem Raj, which is where he perhaps differs from the tribal artists who have a penchant for using bright shades. Indigo blues, olive greens, dusty pinks, murky browns, rusty oranges, pale yellows – Hem Raj is indeed different from them. 

      Like Sufism, again Hem Raj is concerned only with singing praises of the divine. Unlike a few of his contemporaries who are keen to project contemporary life, the artist has restricted himself to religious themes because according to him this is perhaps the best way to try and be with god while living in a society which is “full of false pride, faithlessness and strife” 

         Hem Raj believes an artist is like a flute – it doesn’t pipe of its own. The player is the one who creates the magic of music. Likewise, the comes to naught, he simply becomes a medium. “I am as animate or inanimate as my canvas, brush or colours are. The forms and shapes start talking place the moment I pick up a brush, the painting begins from within me and towards the climax I find myself loosing my own individuality and mingling with the beauty that has flown out of me. That is the ultimate bliss for me. I feel as if I’ve successfully managed to give birth to these forms and in return they are grateful to me for bringing them alive,” – the art and the artist then become one and the same! 

          The flute remains a mute witness to the ongoing phenomenon of the divine, it lets HIM play as per HIS whim and fancy. The artist, then, is the mute witness-cum-medium of the ‘magic that unfolds before his eyes’. The paintings are no longer that of the artist but are the footprints, symbols, and the reflection of the Magnificent who sometimes appears in the form of a beautiful animal or a bird, or even in the vegetation and the sky. “He is the scriptwriter as also the actor, the director and the producer. He is the form, the shape, the colour, the texture and the shine of my art. And he loves me through all these shapes and sizes,” proclaims the Sufi-artist. 

Born on June, 1968, Hem Raj one of the most promising contemporary young artists was initiated into the art by his father who persuaded him into joining the College of Art. But college was limited only to the point where a mother initiates a child into learning to communicate. How he does it and how well depends entirely on the child. For this artist too the art college taught him the basics of creativity, but he preferred to develop his own style instead of limiting himself to a particular genre.       

wards, solo exhibition group shows and workshops have all been cramped into the short span of about four years on his way to being recognized as are artist with a difference. His collection of paintings could be viewed at Lalit Kala Akademi, College of art, Sathiya Kala Parishad besides several private collections in India and abroad the Germans being the most ardent admirers of Hem Raj. 

          But at a glance, the paintings also seem to be proclaiming rebellion against the present. And at time some of them resemble graffiti on the wall. 

KUHU SINGH 

The Indian Express

New Delhi Tuesday