HEM RAJ

PAINTER

ABOUT HEMRAJ'S ART

An Ozone For Spirit

It has been rightly said that one of the sure tests of artistic talent is the evidence of not only continuing but also ever intensified singularity. Now having been witness to this painter’s pilgrim’s progress for the last several years, I believe I’m not putting myself in excessive jeopardy by opining that Hem Raj seems to foot the bill. His work like those of all genuine art workers – embodies a fine degree of clarity, precision, and sharp pictorial detail. If this is true for now, I hope to God that he continues in this same fashion in time to come. I say this last, aware of those Maras of great blandishment that now lie in wait for all honest souls in this our proud seat of power, pelf, and dubious patronage bursting at the seams. The thirty winking pieces of silver have undone the promise of not a few of our artists.

Well, for the moment, we must rejoice considering what the painter has turned out by a slow but considered application of mind and sensibility to his canvases. I would say that what mature with him is his handling of colour, of pigment. Such richness and nevertheless he steers clear of the muddiness and squalor as seems endemic with many of our appliers of oil on canvas. The treatment of the same is here judicious, so well blent, and varied of hue, that our eyes dote on the objects; they linger and savour the delightful taste of the grain, of texture. So most certainly first and foremost your senses have to be entrapped by works of art and only then would our inner censor allow the ingress of heavier stuff like any concealed proposed meanings or social messages.

This present work carries some of those messages viz. the fate of the mute members of creation, but this is done entirely discreetly, that is without treading on our artlover’s tingling toes.

This is the very sort of composition that delivers us from the ugliness and stupidity in those of the image of man, which have invaded much contemporary painting. It does so by getting past the human figure in crass urban surroundings. Here, instead a sense of beauty of rhythm and harmony and of the pleasures of the intelligence – permeated eye is assured. And so too in much similar art, by other fine practitioners of it, a true enough creative subjectivity awakens to itself, but at the same time awakening one to the root reality. Here therefore is a single process, which is poetic knowledge; and then, at the same time, the way, which the free creativity of spirit enters into act, is essentially poetic intuition – that grasping of the inner essence of things and the self into one spontaneous authentic emotion. Such poetic intuition does quite as it pleases with natural appearances. It catches them in its inner music. In that sense Hem Raj’s chosen works, and there are a considerable number of them, quicken emotion as also abet in affection and tenderness. This then is a work with its still intact, creative subjectivity in place.

It is significant that the majority of Hem Raj’s images are botanical. He assimilates the human to the vegetal, he is conscious of humanity and of fauna, but as flora. And quite like members of the vegetable world, all these seem to solicit a pure subject in order that they may pass from a state of blind warfare to the state of peace. Thus this is purified experiencing, the clarified perceptions of what obtains at the base of our contemplating minds, and that despite their relentless self attrition and utilitarian grasping. Such then is the life of our slumbering subjectivity, overlaid as it is by the imperious demands of the present civilization. So, the intellect in this art is an instrument, an adjunct to our awakening to the harmonious duet of self and the said root world. And with these same sort of artistic acts, as though a heavy stone is lifted off our chests. Yes, we of the day are, so overly, pinned under our own frantic needling and doings.

To be sure the painter is following in the line of a tradition. But then he appears to have made it his personal faith. His feeling for the mute, tongueless creatures is all too quietly and unvociferously sought to be given a voice. But a blatant propagation, even for a noble cause, it is not. Not, it is a calm union with the vulnerable; the compassionate look of a kindly feeling eye.

The better artwork is, as every, unpurposivly purposive just natural and unintentional. So this work too. I would not like to paraphrase its content. This can be done, but by killing its spirit. The emotional correlative to the object of all art becomes part of the matter dealt with and is not communicated to the auditors like an infection, not inflicted mechanically like a bullet or knife would, not administered like a poison. No, not all that but simply presented in its being; quietly contemplated as a pattern of life-renewing knowledge. An ozone for spirit.

The select of Hem Raj’s offerings, discharge their true artistic duties honorable. In other words they express, and convey, the joy of being more human.

KESHAV MALIK

Poet and Art Critic