Madanlal: Rustic, Vibrant Richness of Colours

Bengaluru: Madanlal is a Chandigarh-based artist known for his rustic, vibrant richness of colours, specialising in rural folklore and traditional backgrounds, generally coinciding with parrot green and light yellow shades. However, the presence of parrots is a common phenomenon in almost all his works. He was recently in Bengaluru to take part in the international Art Camp organised by the Krishna Setty Foundation, and took time to engage in an informal chat:

A career with the Institute of Design for Handicrafts: Madanlal, although basically from Chandigarh, Punjab, happens to be his parental state. He studied in the College of Arts, Chandigarh, and then started his career working at the Institute of Design for Handicrafts as an Assistant Director. The main purpose of the institute was to create designs for a particular segment of people. So, that helped him a lot in his drawing process. He created a lot of designs for hand embroideries, for textiles, and then it was on woodcraft.

Passion to become an artist: In the initial stage, Madanlal made it a regular practice to keep drawing. As he was from the College of Arts, his passion was to be an artist from his village, for hailing from a rural area. So, initially, he started painting the village women, and later oncame to Chandigarh.

Visit to any number of countries to paint: Maybe for the same reasons, there is a lot of influence of the rural landscapes in his works. He gradually progressed in his typical signature style of painting and tried with 3D patterns of drawing as well. Meanwhile, he got an assignment for the national work from the Government of India along with a scholarship. He also travelled widely for international and national artist symposiums by visiting London, Sweden, Egypt, Macedonia, Turkey, and then Bosnia, and to several countries on invitation.

The main purpose is transformation: Madanlal says, "So, my main focus here was previously on the subject of Sufis, as I basically belong to Punjab. Sometimes it's Gurbani. It's like, Hey man, tu jyot swaroop hai, apna musha. The process of this evolvement, hey man, means your mind, you are like the light, and you have to hear to see your own soul, to check your own soul. So, that's the main purpose of the transformation...

...Recent work on Kasturi: Recently, my work has been on Kasturi. Kasturi means everybody, like humans, also has that kind of fragrance. But we are in search of the same elsewhere outside the world. Like the deer has fragrance in its body, but its whole life ends up in travelling and finding Kasturi khashmak".

A lot of parrots! Madanlal adds, "And then you see a lot of parrots in my work. That was automatically like one Sufi song is there. Tera pinjara jungle ne khana miya mittu ud jana. Miya Mittu is the parrot, pinjara means your body. Isn't it? Soul, parrot is symbolising soul, parrot is symbolising love. Parrot is also symbolising this; we can say our mind. Every time it is speaking, every time speaking, but you can't find any time it is saying kabhi chup bhi baitha hai raat ko. When we sleep, tab bhi. You can see a lot of noise. What noise is there? That noise is outside and inside. So, in my work, you can see all these characteristics".

A lot of geometry in paintings: Madanlal's paintings are replete with geometry of their own kind, and that too in abundance. For inculcation of this parameter, Madanlal asserts, "You can also notice a fair proportion of geometry in my paintings. The reason is that I live now in Chandigarh, and Chandigarh is a city known for geometry. From my village, I was part of those traditions like spiritual song, traditional song, and folk song. And then a lot of colour, vibrant colour that was phulkari, our traditional folk. You can see vibrancy in that colour. So, many a time I try to just convert, but automatically it's in your personality. In your personality, maybe sometimes it becomes your style. So you can see my work anywhere and easily recognized".

-Manohar Yadavatti