In an age when most people feel shy of showing their passion, Delhi-based artist Renuka Varma has made a difference. The 63-year-old is preparing to showcase her paintings done over one and a half years in a debut show named ‘Shakhein: Another Tree, Another Sky’. The solo show, curated by Dr Alka Pande, will be inaugurated by acclaimed poet and lyricist, Gulzar on March 1 and will continue till March 6 at Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre. Nearly 30 paintings depicting the artist’s perspective on nature, especially trees in landscape will be on display in oils and acrylics on canvas.
Being a law graduate from Delhi University, Varma has not acquired any training in art. She is a self-trained artist whose interest took her this far. “I have pursued law and after that I got married to Pawan, who was with Indian foreign service, so we moved on. But as a student and while I was young, I always used to sketch. I grew up in lush green mountains (in Mussoorie) so I spent most of my spare time sitting outdoors, watching the changing moods of the forest, and listening to the sounds of nature. This is how I developed an interest and fell in love with painting the landscapes. Also, due to my husband’s job, I have travelled a lot and visited ample forests and through this exhibition, I have tried to bring alive those memories,” says Varma.
Varma took a break from painting due to a tragic experience. She bounced back to painting after a gap of three years after she lost almost all her works to water-logging in Bhutan in 2012. After this distressing experience, she refrained herself from picking up paint and brush again. “I have only three old canvases from the past. All my initial works got destroyed due to water-logging. I had stopped painting and didn’t even touch paint brushes and colours for three years but it was Pawan and Alka who persuaded me to start painting again. I think, had they not supported me, I would not have thought of exhibiting my works,” she says.
The main focus of this exhibition, for Varma, has been on painting environment, trees and forest along with an installation, which is called ‘The Forest That Was’. All the 30 pieces that are on display are different from each other. All the painted forests are different from each other. There are about six paintings on mountains and clouds. The rest are all on a new style, where different colours and styles are used as a technique.
