Once I was travelling by road to Ranchi from Patna and as is my usual practice, I fell asleep in the car. When I woke up, I thought I had died and gone to heaven for what I saw will always remain etched as one of my most cherished mindscape.

The evening winter was powdery in its intensity and glorious in its dramatic exit as it was making attempts to nestle in amidst a tangle of treetops for the night. The tangerine and peaches skyline with painted-to-perfection wisps of clouds scattered on it were dimpling with a lazy smile. From the vantage point of my car window till the eye could see was a vast lake of crimson lotuses and in the centre stood a lattice monument of white marble with a white marble pathway leading to it rather like the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
“Where are we?” I mumbled in my dreamy, sleepy stupor. My colleague laughed and coined the epithet “Your Sleepiness” for me and told me that this was a monument dedicated to Lord Mahavira and this is where he is said to have found enlightenment. The frame for the visit was set and the subsequent days in Jharkhand in quest of literacy whizzed past. But, it was the memory of the monument in the lotus pond is what I always associate with Ranchi.
And recently when I met Tanuj Bhramar, a young multi-dimensional artist from Ranchi, I again returned to that beautiful visual. That Tanuj has spent many years away from Jharkhand first in Doon School, Dehra Dun and the in Columbia College Hollywood and has now set up base in Mumbai to pursue film making, is in many ways incidental and yet intrinsic to his journey, both as an artist and a filmmaker. For it is my conviction that one can take a person away from a place, you can’t take a place away from the person. Mindscapes are permanent.
It is an old adage that simplicity is the most complicated to achieve. It could seem like a contradiction in terms, but there is no better description of Tanuj’s paintings. His reds, blues, yellows and greens rub shoulders with stark blacks and shiny greens, but instead of grating, have the ability to soothe with their apparent minimalism. Look a little closer and there is fascinating complexity of thought and grace of form in the works.
With these thoughts I decided to present Tanuj’s solo exhibition Magical Transitions, at my favourite art space, the Art Spice Gallery, Metropolitan Hotel. The show will be on from September 5 till 11 and can be viewed between 10 am and 7 pm.
It is amazing that Tanuj is able to tap into the mystical and the supernatural to create forthright and definitive images that are so deeply embedded into the unconscious mind with such graceful ease. Layering, grading, texturing and highlights are the bedrock of Tanuj’s works. Swirling mist is a recurring setting in his work almost like a silent muse. He has gone back to the mysterious and mystical repeatedly to draw inspiration and perhaps find solace in it. Even now the forms that find place in his work have a whiff of the secretive foggy mist. “Being the only child, I learnt to be with myself and got used to being on my own. I wouldn’t call myself a loner, but I am comfortable with aloneness,” he says with a smile.
“I view all paintings as a Rorschach test, a single painting may mean different things to different people. I would like the viewer to give me his or her interpretation. I always believed that any artwork is the creator’s child; it grows and speaks to you through other people. During my stay in California I visited a lot of art museums and galleries. The expressionistic and the surrealistic art movements fascinated me. Artists like Degas, Munch and Dali played an integral part in my understanding of my own style. I would describe my paintings as an amalgamation of surrealistic and expressionistic paintings,” he says.
The structures persuade the viewer to explore deeper and the depths incarcerate the curiosity almost at once for the connect is almost primeval as are the colours. His extensive travelling across India and continents capture in his mindscape the heritage and sensibility rooted in the colours of India, Africa, America — albeit at a primordial level. “For some reason I felt greater affinity with black people from Ethiopia, the Caribbean islands or Nigeria. My close interaction with them helped me gain an insight and a different perspective on how they view things,” Tanuj recounts.
He is very enthralled with the strong definitive colours, the practice, the composition of the artwork, and the simplicity. The woman protagonist is recurring icon in his paintings as she appears, almost unbidden to inhabit his paintings complete with amazing strength of character in her face to add an aura of mystery to his paintings. The woman’s role is an eternally shifting one in Tanuj’s work. She mesmerises, coaxes, beckons, allures with her look, the absence of drapes render her strong rather than uncovered and reveal the thoughts that churn in her mind and heart. There is quiet acceptance of this way of life as women protagonists are rarely agitated, but questioningly bestow peace in his works.
However, the subject matter of his paintings concentrates on the traditions and symbols of tribal cultures, portrayed through its distinct heritage, its natural environment of fauna. Birds and animals populate his work in a style that is marked by simplifying the objects he sees, hence, they appear as symbols or signs.
An animal lover, Tanuj has spent long years in the lap of nature in Jharkhand and Uttarakhand where his close brush with nature led to an imagery that is rooted in the fauna of these regions. He delves deep into his consciousness to paint images that are deeply connected to the mystical and the mysterious. The colours are muted, in a flurry of swirls that seem to melt like a magic carpet transcending the clouds. They emanate calm, balance and equanimity exuding from within. He draws inspiration from characters like Ravana and Sugreev from the Ramanaya, classical and modern literature.
Acutely conscious of giving back to the community, he donates 20 per cent of his earnings from the exhibitions to fund the education of tribal children through Vikas Bharti, a Jharkhand-based NGO. Right now, there is a small art school on the NGO’s premises, and Tanuj hopes that the proceeds from his exhibition will help them build a bigger school. Undoubtedly a laudable goal. More power to his brush!

Alka Raghuvanshi is an art writer, curator and artist and can be contacted on alkaraghuvanshi@yahoo.com