Blue...

On our several drives up the Great Ocean Road, I often tried to capture the brilliance of the blue seas through my lenses....but every time I laid down on my stomach on the edge of a jutting cliff to click away, I always ended up with bits of wild foliage sticking into the frame. This painting is a celebration of the mirth of those dancing leaves and branches which were often times just weeds in the crazy sea wind...

Photo By: Dita

Blue was a latecomer among colours used in art and decoration. Warm earthy colours like reds, browns, and ochres are found even in Paleolithic cave paintings but not blue. Even when man started to dye fabrics, blue was the last colour to be introduced. This is probably due to the difficulty of making good blue dyes and pigments. The earliest known blue dyes were made from plants like woad in Europe and indigo in Asia and Africa. Blue pigments on the other hand were made from expensive minerals like lapis lazuli or azurite. It therefore slowly became a luxury colour and was used sparingly until synthetic ways of creating the colour was introduced. Oriental vases, with their beautiful blue scroll work, are by far my most favourite bit of tangible history that features the colour blue.

Photo Courtesy: Chinese-treasures.net

Artists recognised the emotional power of blue and often made it the central element of paintings.  Washed out shades of it, is often used to create a melancholic mood along with green with no warm tones at all. I wonder if this has any link to the etymology of the phrase ‘Monday Morning Blues’!

I however, do not believe in washed out shades, neither do I dwell in melancholy! Blue to me is the brilliance of the sea in the sun, the depth of the sky on a perfect day...it is the sense of ‘ahhh’ that I feel when I look out of the window of my car in a road trip and I remember, when we were little and Ma Baba used to take us to the city in the local train...I used to sit by the window, gaze out into the open sky and get lost in my world of imagination...it was this blue! ...the brilliant blue that still gives me a sense of comfort and makes it easy for me to quickly forget the mundane day to day and get lost in my world....the world that is always bright, happy and NOW brimming with memories...



Photo Courtesy: Aurobindo Banerjee



The Rainbow

The Rainbow has always been a thing of mystery and awe!...To some it is the path made by a messenger from heaven to earth, to others it is a slit in the sky sealed by a goddess. Whatever the belief is, the rainbow always seems to connect the known to the unknown, the real to the unreal. And, the end of the rainbow is a secret hiding place for the pot of gold. A place that is impossible to reach...


Photo Courtesy: Zazzle.com

My passion for colours and painting is my secret hiding place of my ever-bursting emotions. It is where I make the in-tangible tangible, the unknown known...it is where I can say that orange is the pure sense of joy that I feel when I&J give me a warm hug, it is where I can say that red is the love I feel for M when he unloads the dishwasher, it is where I say that purple is the secret desire of my heart and blue is the the fresh scent of spring!



THE RAINBOW COLLECTION Photo By: Dita

I am not in search of the end of the rainbow...I am here to enjoy the journey. The journey of life which I prefer to see through rainbow lenses. And I will share with you every colour of life, the ups and downs, the goods and the bads, the defined and the abstract!

In tune with all of this I have named my first ever formal collection of paintings - The Rainbow Collection. On the left is a sneak peek of what is to follow in my next posts.