Abstract art

When was the only time you thought that something was very different. It could be something in the way you respond, absorb and understand. There’s depth, fear and a clear streak of genuine content too ! No matter how hard you try, it just doesn’t fit anything you ever saw before. Never found the right word or the right sentence to describe because it simply remains. It fills you and empties you all at the time. You sit in retrospect and sprinkle all you ever knew to decipher the heights and the depths clearly. To see patterns as usual. A picture speaks a thousand words. To read the picture and connect. Yet it remained elusive. The search to more clues is always ongoing in order for unsorted data to be sorted. It eats into all you do and all you plan to sort out for sure!  All of a sudden its all there when you decided to see a stroke that stands out clearly to define and name it. To pin the context.  Sometimes like a scary sonnet or sometimes sweet and sacred...all in one piece of art. You see all the colours- the high mountains, the quiet stream, the singing birds, the troubled waters, the happy brook, the ferocity of the branches that reach out from it...all off the same abstract picture! Nature has so many facets to show and its only a few that we play back into the picture we try and decipher. Its also a belief that its the nature that we see that shows in the picture too!

A machine at work. The orange ball is the thought that stuck out!

A scary one !



I thought were strands of hair. A dishevelled hair !

 

Entwined in thoughts and purpose.

                         

While on a stroll through the school gallery, there are many pictures that tell many tales. I could quickly make the lines. The abstract art piece is the one that disturbs you and pulls all strings together to make a picture in your mind. The artist here has used the shades and strokes with a reason and I believe a good one to justify unto himself what he intended to paint, was of value and substance. When we walk away you took with it only the meaning that you attributed to it. Its not easy, people, to make things in this world that are of genuine value and meaning. It sometimes remains stuck with the artist and never reached the altar. It’s the artists’ mind that reflects on the picture . Nothing more and nothing less! Atleast what you thought the artist wanted to. There are a million interpretations to what we know and how we know but what is, hasn’t changed in the picture. Sometimes nothing changes the way you have seen the picture not even an artist who saw the picture with you. This abstract description was meant to show the 'Unknower' I remain in Art as an area of knowledge! So much to aesthetics and my art classes!:)

The mind by large is the only supreme judge of all that it sees. It kindles the thoughts to make jotted points. It painstakingly understands the sketches it sees .The rays of thoughts have been dabbed, dipped, stroked and visualized even before you have read the label below this abstract piece. No label too! Such is the power of the senses. To read what is seen and unseen. Its beyond the comprehension of an individual to understand how the mind comprehended. That conception happened now, but the inception, a good while ago. It read the things that were in sync, in which symmetry was seen and all that there was on the same vibration only. The rest remained unlabelled and sometimes not worth filling up with thoughts.' I couldn’t relate to that bit' we would  say. Or may be we could and never tried to!

The journey through the gallery can bring many ideas to the table, ultimately. It did and always will kindle the mind as it is an experience in complete isolation. Its like a constant query for the truth. The unlabelled piece  leaves me to say what I want on it . It’s the freedom and the liberty it gives me to christen it and understand it at my will . An interpretation that remains liberalized and has for me broken all frames and fences that were once defined as boundaries of thought.  Within the confines of the mind I found the best way to answer the puzzles of the picture.That’s about abstract art…. that keeps many a people like me who can barely draw a straight line still thinking about the abstract picture that hangs on my mind’s wall!

On being a woman everywhere!

Its not often these days that I get to join a congregation of friends for a hearty conversation. Ok truth be told, its normally absolutely therapeutic.  The topics are generally.. husband bashing(sometimes, only sometimes glorifying also;)), about how disobedient our kids have turned out to be and how accommodative of those mistakes we have become, weight loss ways(most depressing topic because you are left feeling very FAT), cookery with all the details exchanged  as though we were making that immediately for the next meal session, movies, children’s school activity, which restaurant was visited recently (I am normally blur here…!), how to clean the glass pane in a new way, which detergent powder is best and economical  or why the temple is crowded on Friday mornings. While sometimes I find these topics mundane and degenerated in quality, I must admit that this makes for a large part of a lady’s mind and soul. They are good and healthy in many ways.

As a teacher, my fellow teachers in the staffroom and me always have had stories to narrate. About kids who play truant, kids who are very bright but don’t work hard(secretly all teachers are fond of such kids as they make for brilliant students who need our help to be pushed forward!) and how much we dislike that attitude, kids who show impeccable politeness and dedication and above all a passion for our subjects, which kid got admission where, how she coped with her difficulties, difficult parents  etc. of course we talk about the new trousers someone is wearing or the grand sale of shoes. We tell students not to compare marks but we would put the marks on Excel and get graphs out and compare performances. We talk about that too! Which 3 –in-1 coffee brand is best suited and to end the conversation we will talk about why coffee is bad for health as well. Contradictions galore but it continues!! Show off the cards and words written by students as though that was any yardstick to the teachers we were. Definitely not. But it does make a teacher’s heart sing! ‘Just look what my class had to say’. The joy is immense in this kind of sharing. Well, to put it right, its very reassuring for ourselves when we show each other these notes.

One of the cards for teacher's day that described me 'Patient' everywhere!Now?!

As a parent my conversations with my 11 year old mostly is about her day. ‘How best do you think we could have managed the stage for our class assembly? We got a remark that our class didn’t manage the stage properly!’ Now that’s not a question. So I mustn’t answer that. I know just what to say…say nothing. Well that’s saying something too! So I change the context and ask her about her selections. “Not sure whether I will be in the school BB team. But ma its so unfair…the senior girls are so tall and super! Well , "Super" is unfair, people, for kids today at least for mine! ‘Good ! Practice shooting well. You can make it’! Did you finish lunch fully, when is playtime today, are you going to wash your hair now and what is the book you just started. All these help to get a pulse of how her day has been. I love hearing and she loves saying and vice versa. So it works well between us!!  Its helpful when you have exhaustively probed all the areas!!

I want to stop this rant and make an intuitive observation…that,  if all this was by the men and not by the women in context would this whole aspect of therapy, reassurance as I call it  and helpful as I see it be different ! Yes , vastly I suppose and of course I admit that all this is part of all our lives and definitely don’t presume this is how it goes for all women. But having said that , I do see that there are many points of uniqueness in playing the role as a woman!

What say people!