ABOUT Treasure Art Gallery: TAG
Located in the heart of New Delhi at Defence colony, TAG lays down a cultural platform dedicated to both modern and contemporary Indian art. They aim to create an interactive dialogue around art, connecting artists with art enthusiasts, collectors, and buyers. TAG also extends to support seminars, workshops, lectures, discussions, and talk sessions to invoke conversations around art. Through a panoramic widescreen display (96×144 inches) outside the gallery, they aim to prompt art ideas and knowledge amongst the public.
TAG values and appreciate different art forms and promote diversity of mediums. The process of a careful selection of artworks and exhibiting them with splendor is of utmost importance to us.
The gallery space is expansive and stretches to two floors. The ground floor expands to 1900 sq ft. and the basement opens up to 2100 sq ft wide space.
The Lightening Painter
Usha Phenany Pathak talks about her journey as a painter who has traveled across the globe but returns to her motherland bringing with it the power of her artwork, that may be compared to the ocean contained within a dewdrop.
The rapidity with which Usha Phenany Pathak paints definitely defines her work. Known as the lightening portraitist who could put down line, color, and composition with an amazing amount of speed and precision to capture the resemblance of her sitter, the young Usha began as a force to reckon with. However, do not mistake the speed with which she works as a kind of nonchalance. She knows every color, every stroke, and every evocation that she renders on canvas.
There is also a certain abstraction that is part of her work, even where her portraits although they capture the essence of the sitter, there is a use of color and line that may be characterized as a post-Impressionist fervor. Her work is characterized by its contours and mannerism, where the glazed brushstrokes bring a vibrant quality and unbridled passion to the work that elicits a visceral emotional impact. In a sense, her work taps into the “Synthetism” that was characteristic of works by Paul Gauguin, and according to its tenets, the final, visual form is determined by a synthesis of the outward appearance of the natural form. The artist’s feelings about the subject matter, and the aesthetic considerations of color, line, and form decide the attractiveness of the form. In Usha’s works many times there is an emphasis on the face and the other aspects are rendered in an abstract manner, such as the background or the space surrounding the figure.
Usha’s training began when she was but five years old, who found that she was drawn to the Scraper-Board that her father created. “Scraper-board was a unique technique of drawing, which was used some 70 years ago for reproducing the accurate print, for newspaper advertising. My father Mr. Shankar Phenany was one of the five topmost renowned artists in India, who mastered this technique. This drawing method was introduced by the British where the artist employed a board of plaster of Paris and the German Pelican waterproof black ink. It is spread and once it is dried, using a very sharp scraper, the artist scrapes down the ink, to make vertical and horizontal lines to acquire a dot. The drawing is made with these dots, with absolute accuracy and precision,” she recalls.
With the technique unfolding before her eyes, Usha moved towards art as naturally as a duck to water. Although she did not begin learning and reproducing that scraperboard technique, which she was very much in awe of, she adopted her own approach. She began drawing directly with the pen or ballpen on the paper without any prior marking with a pencil. Also, at the age of 13, she rendered the paintings directly with colors on canvas without making any prior sketching or drawings. “These drawings and paintings were very much rewarding but I wasn’t able to capture the whisper of the wind and the gurgling of the river in a realistic manner and that led to the happening of abstraction in my work. For she believes, “The painting is happening,” she says passionately.
She went on to study painting at Sir J.J. School of Art in 1975 where she came under the influence of Shankar B Palsikar, the father of Mumbai’s contemporary art culture and mentor to Bombay Group of Artists, and a great number of city artists who found fame and fortune in the twentieth century. Later on, she went on to study at the computer Graphics in the USA in 1992 and round it off with a tutorial at of Sculpture at the Center of New York in 1994. “I wanted to give both — my ability to draw and conceive form importance and my ability to imagine things in an abstract manner as well,” she defines her purpose adding, “I traveled the world looking for the dialogue between the human soul and the cosmic energy power. I felt that I could combine figurative and space elements to achieve this and I began to paint in a larger format as a painting and not a portrait,” she says. Usha’s approach to some of her works also carries her method of learning and training in a sculpture. In a sense, some of the work does have a sculptural feel to it, with an emphasis on musculature and bone. The full-formed faces convey a sense of power and unbridled modular structure.
During her time in the US, Jean-Michel Basquiat was her favorite artist. It was his ability to combine his writing of enigmatic epigrams withdrawing, and painting that inspired her. His bringing together of text and image, abstraction, figuration, and historical information mixed with contemporary critique, was much in the manner that appealed to her and spoke to the sensibilities that charmed her. The ability to bring something to the ‘sufferance right from the inner recesses’ is what charmed her and acted as a stimulant for her work.
“In a sense, it was also coming across the writing of Kabir and his dohas that was inspirational. He compared the dewdrop and the ocean for they both were made of the same water and in a way the dew had the same water of the sea even if one was more powerful than the other. I spend my life as an artist looking for the power of the ocean in the dewdrop,” she says.
With the elements combined under her control, Usha’s painting managed to achieve many landmarks during her career. She showed her work in Manchester, Aldwych, and London in the UK and in Wyoming, New York, and C A in the USA, besides showing in India and Columbo, Sri Lanka. She has taught at Sir J. J. School of Art, of which she is an alumna, as the assistant lecturer and has served as the Honorary Joint Secretary to the Arts Society of India. In the US she has served as a Founder Member of The Sunnyside Art League, NY, Jury for the International Art shows, and for the Ecuadorian Cultural Exchange School, New York.
After achieving so much it seems impossible that she would be building a future project and yet she is. At the auction of her paintings, a few years ago in Delhi, that was organized by the Earth Foundation, she was introduced to many dignitaries and ambassadors from across the world. She appealed to them to contribute to the cause of charity to underprivileged girl children. Many Ambassadors from Europe and the Middle East, invited her to their country to hold her exhibition. She requested them to be a part of this project.
“I have been making quick sketches of the patients at the Tata-Bhabha cancer hospital in Mumbai to make small books for sale whose proceeds will be deployed towards the treatment of cancer patients. Many ambassadors have responded to my request by assuring me of assistance while in their country. It has been an ongoing process that I am occupied with until now and into the distant future,” says Usha Phenany Pathak.
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