Elusive auras

Over the ten years, since Milind Nayak left banking for painting, his interest in depicting the many looks and moods of nature has undergone several shifts of style.

After the digital prints layering dry autumnal leaves into dense designs, his focus had been on oils and canvas.

In his landscapes and close-ups of greenery he constantly alternates between a realistic rendering and abstracted ones, at times venturing into pure abstraction. Alongside, the effects vacillate from rather literal to those meant to capture the atmosphere. So far, his efforts relied on the formal properties of pigment handling, while composition depend on quite fixed number of pattern varieties, its decorative character emphasized by the often somewhat sweetened colors. The new body of work, however, brings a double change. Firstly, and most importantly, the artist chooses to draw evocativeness from the behavior of a natural phenomenon itself instead of imposing on it a preconceived profile.

In concrete terms, Nayak attunes himself to the fluid shadows cast by trees and foliage and strives to express and synthesize the images from within the shapes, blurring areas and dynamism they conjure.

Secondly, the so effected limitation of hues to variants of a black and white monochrome possesses its own virtue.

It avoids the earlier pretty colors on the one hand and, on the other, allows for a more analytical as well as sensitive concentration on the direct sources of inspiration. Nayak's "Conversations with shadows", in the best instances, offer cultured images that contain echoes of the occurrence's structure on par with the light suggestiveness. It is not that the temptation to general designing and small patterning has stopped, nevertheless the painter subdues, it there and goads to yield some essential and the subtle. One quite appreciates the expansive mixed media canvases bearing the exhibition title numbered 2 and 9, also the two impressions from the shadows on his wall and on his neighbor's wall.

An interesting development comes with the piece "Shadows Dancing in the moonlight" where a hesitant crisscross of bamboo stems and leaves enters into a misty merger with its own shadows, the whole being intuited through a softly throbbing, milky gray haze. By contrast, certain other compositions disappoint, as they revert largely to the design-basis with a dose of unnecessary obviousness and a tinge of sugary pigmentation, even if it does not manifest fully. One would like to see Nayak consolidate the insights self-acquired from the natural world.


By Marta Jakimowiz -Karle 
Deccan Herald, Monday, April 19, 2004