Exhibition at the Phansi Museum. March 2017

A QUESTION OF BALANCE. When all around is upside down.

This all started in a precarious position of uncertainty – to fall or not to fall – the options were equally depressing.So in a crazy world one has to explore radical solutions, stretching to the outermost limits of credibility and possibility. After all, the only truth is the experience of the moment, awakening to a realization that one must risk everything to find equilibrium.

So in a crazy world one has to explore radical solutions, stretching to the outermost limits of credibility and possibility. After all, the only truth is the experience of the moment, awakening to a realization that one must risk everything to find equilibrium.

I am also fascinated by interplay between the possible and the impossible in art. For me the most enthralling and challenging aspect of the creative process is releasing the waiting image, mysteriously concealed within the material. Oftentimes one has to relinquish preconceived expectations and trust simply in the wondrous exploration of creative imagination.

Making art is always intense, some have expressed it as the ultimate risk-taking, stepping off a cliff into the unknown, Cezanne is reported to have said he ‘died’ every time his brush touched the canvas. I feel sometimes it is like balancing on a knife edge, I become so anxious that the expression evoked is true to the inner impetus. And it takes time. Hours can pass in a twinkling, and within that time, the process can be so arduous. I mentioned how sometimes the work changes, evolves, maybe sometimes the verb should be ‘mutates’, before the result is “right”

The question of balance referred me to the archetype of the circus clown who puts the ups and downs of “life” into perspective, who helps us laugh at our own idiosyncrasies, essentially to see things differently.

Clowns have a much more serious entity than is often thought. Clowns, jesters and mimes function in most cultures and traditions. But historically the clown’s role is always more than mere amusement, ‘they were the original “truth tellers,” whose job was to mock typical human vices of vanity, snobbery, laziness, gluttony etc. Court jesters aimed their humour at the usual targets: religion and the hypocrisy of its authority figures and corrupt, incompetent leaders. And don’t we need their sharp critical wit now!
But how to sculpt the clown? I have used a simple archetypal image of that festive decoratively attired acrobat – all clowns have incredible acrobatic abilities – I remember so well the somersaulting cartwheeling colourful characters that rushed around the Big Ring of the traveling Circus that visited my childhood home once a year…