In communion with the sea

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Artist Nibedita Sen

It is hard not to be moved by Nibedita Sen’s magical explorations into the myriad moods of the sea that comes alive on the canvas in all its shapes and shades.
The self-taught artist — who had a solo exhibition of paintings, titled Sea Inside that was held at the Lalit Kala Adademi in New Delhi from April 15 to 21 — captures the capricious sea, lending life, through oil and acrylic, to its beauty, enormity and tranquillity. Through her strokes, she sets on an enchanting voyage through the deep blue waters, navigating from the hollering of the waves, the swept-away seashore, the patches of clouds, the various forms of the moon, playing hide-and-seek between the clouds, the mammoth blackness of the deep seas to a sudden flicker or ripple of light in the absolute darkness.
Sen is like a chronicler of the life of (and on) the sea, portraying it in all its astounding, wholesome detail.
While Sea Inside is an obvious nod to the sea inside Sen, the act of painting it also becomes an act of “seeing inside”, an examination of the solitude of the self, of a human being pitted against the vastness of the sea. On the sidelines of the show, a conversation with the artist, jettisoned by a cup of coffee with her, offers insights into the genesis of her works, her voyages and the staggering spell the sea holds on her.
Born in Calcutta (now Kolkata), Sen went to the University of Calcutta where she studied English literature. After her stints with sculpture and freelance journalism, she worked as a creative art therapist at New Delhi’s Spinal Injuries Centre and, later, with visually-challenged children at the National Association for the Blind. While working with visually-impaired children, she had a “communion” with nature that propelled her towards a new understanding of life. This understanding was what led her to fine arts. “I couldn’t, but had to paint,” says Sen, talking about the shift of focus and her artistic journey that was flagged off with a solo show at Calcutta’s Gaganendra Shilpa Pradarshashala, in 1997.
Ten years later, in 2007, she had a show of her paintings at the Chemould Art Gallery in Kolkata. In 2010, she was part of a group show at Kolkata’s Academy of Fine Arts with her three paintings on Tagore to mark his 150th birth anniversary, and had another show at New Delhi’s Lalit Kala Akademi. Last year, she held a show on women and relationships at New Delhi’s Renaissance Art Gallery.
The 55-odd paintings, which are a part of the series on the sea, happened to Sen over the last 10 years after she set out on voyages with her husband, a master mariner, whom she married in 2001.
Voyaging on an oil tanker, which doesn’t touch too many shores, she traversed through the deep waters for days on end. There was only the sky and the ocean. For miles on end, there was no brown, no green — only blue. For many years, Sen could only “internalise” the sea, soaking its many colours, revelling in its character. “Sometimes all I could see was a light-blue or turquoise strip in the dead blue ocean,” she says.
A crucial element in the sea’s character, says Sen, is light. “The sea behaves according to the way light falls on it,” she says. The sea is, thus, the stage and light a dancer. “I saw Tagore’s entire Gitanjali getting recreated on the sea,” says Sen, talking about the poetry created by the sea, the waves, the cloud, the moon.
Sen describes these paintings as accounts of the “hour-by-hour change of colours and characters of the sea and the psyche of the ocean”.
Witnessing the sea, in its tranquil and wild moments — says Sen — makes you feel “awestruck and insignificant”. “Sometimes you feel the ocean will rise and take you in,” says the artist, whose voyages have led to a “mystic communion” with nature. “Just like mountains, you have the call of the sea. Seas and oceans are born out of Panchbhoot, the five elements of nature. Just like landscapes, the sea in you comes out when you are in deep communion with it,” says Sen, who is fascinated by the sea’s sensuousness, calm, as well as turmoil. “It has a cathartic spell on you. You feel as if you’re alive, not dead anymore”.
Sen, who has done most of these paintings onboard, making use of calendars, describes the exercise of painting the sea, which keeps opening up unknown landscapes to her as “magical realism”. She feels “possessed” by the sea, which finds its own currents on the canvas. It is as if the sea is revealing itself through her, as if Sen is merely a catalyst. Quoting Tagore (“When I write, I don’t know who takes my hands”), she says the same is true for her too. How she achieves the kind of texture, still remains unfathomable to her.
Sen, who also writes poetry, feels at home with colours, as much as she feels with literature. Coping with the unbearable loss of her father at an early age, and, later, her mother and brother, she learnt to be “positive” while working with people with spinal injuries and the specially-abled children. “Instead of rehabilitating them, I was rehabilitated by them,” says Sen.
Seeing the differently-abled bristling with positivity and hope, showed Sen some rays of light even as she was battling the darkness of personal pain. It is perhaps because of this that light in the midst of a dark ocean makes “all the difference” to her.
“Painting is me and everything beyond me,” says Sen, whose next show will be held in Amsterdam from June 17 to July 17, followed by another in Dhaka towards the end of the year.