The remarkable Indian artist, Pinky Kumari Madawela, was born in Bihar, India. Bihar is famous for the ancient pilgrimage site of Buddha’s Bodhi tree, growing in the serene Bodhgaya’s Mahabodhi Temple.
Madawela was fortunate to have studied at the great Indian ‘renaissance’ master, Rabindranath Tagore 's university, BharatiVisva-Bharati University (Kala-Bhabana) in Santiniketan, West Bengal. She completed her MFA in sculpture, then moved to Karnakata.
Her intense love for painting, and her immense joy for colour, shines through all her very expressive art works. In interviews Madawela has expressed that her interest in colour bursts forth like the Indian Spring festival of Holi, in which the four main colours - red, blue, yellow and green all have deeply symbolic meanings. Within a web of complex significations red becomes concepts of love and fertility, but also fire and purity; blue is the eternal colour of Krishna and his all-inclusiveness; yellow is the colour of harvest, and turmeric, while green is spring, new beginnings and happiness.
Madawela’s vivid paintings swirl, and at times erupt with spiritual or metaphysical energy. In vibrant paintings such as ‘I Found my Orange Dress’ (mixed media on paper), wisps of line skate along intriguing surfaces. A mixture of female figures are revealed, emerging from roots of colour, orange, pink, and a surprise of blue (top right). There are hints of Medieval paintings. Courtiers huddle together gossiping, perhaps of forbidden loves, while gaiety takes centre stage and the splendour of the favourite dress is revealed.
Through her titles and the artworks they describe, Madawela’s fascination with spirituality prevails. In ‘State of the Heart’ and ‘Novices’ the onlooker becomes a voyeur, beguiled by Sufic choreography, transposed with Rumi’s poetry into the mystic realms of Dervish dances. The paintings become poetry. The resultant paintings, the line, the colour all speak to the heart as the artist takes the onlooker’s hand into the swing and sway, is turned around and around into a transcendental ascent, a romance of movement and of the spirit. We are surrendered to a god, receiving their esoteric, divine love. Heavenly blue reveals a meditation of movement and transcendence which Madawela is intent upon drawing us into, coaxing us to join the Dervish dancers, and her, in the dances of love, turning towards the truth, abandoning egos, twisting towards the ultimate lover’s perfection. The whirling Sufic dance is the ‘Sema’, originating in 13th century Turkey. Sufis are known for their wooden (sufa) cloaks. The Mevlevis order, those who perform the dance, was founded by the poet and mystic Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, mostly just known as Rumi.
Yet, even in height of passionate movement there is stillness. Amidst paintings with the forcefulness of ‘Durga’, its sombre tones and its Chagal black, there are images that simply reach out to your soul, capture your consciousness. A youthful Buddha (Young Buddha) comes draped in the orange red of his philosophy. There are a multitude of conjectures clouding the background of Madawela’s painting, but Siddhartha Gautama shines, radiant, his eyes full of hope and his destiny. It is still an impassioned piece, full of energy and vitalism, which ultimately draws the onlooker’s eye to the soft, loving, eyes of the man who will become Buddha. The painting is haunting, not in any negative sense but in the sense that the Mona Lisa is haunting and, once seen, is hard to forget.
Pinky Kumari Madawela is a painter of the spirit.
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