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Green Pebble Magazine
Articles
Jewels of India:
Valerie Armstrong,
Jennifer Hall and Annie Owen
Green Pebble Autumn 2008 issue
Artists
throughout the centuries have been inspired by the colour, contrasts and sensations
that India offers in abundance. A wealth of sensory experience and spiritual
intensity awaits the visitor, although many Indians still live very simply
or in dire poverty.
This autumn, three East
Anglian artists, Valerie Armstrong, Jennifer Hall and Annie Owen, will share
their individual experiences of travelling in India through their work. They
have elected to use Kala Yatra, their exhibition during London’s
Asian Art Week, to celebrate what they saw and felt during their travels through
the subcontinent, and in the process they hope to raise money for Indian children’s
charity ‘ASHA For Education’.
Valerie Armstrong
For Valerie Armstrong, who first visited Rajasthan five years ago, the overwhelming
feeling about India is that it is a gift to creativity; a sensory overload
to such an extent that whilst in amidst it all, she finds it hard to lose
herself to drawing or painting.
‘It’s all too exciting, too immediate,’ she explains. ‘So
I forgive myself and let the camera and small loose sketches become my tools.
In this way I carefully gather material to work from in the studio at home.’
She describes her experience of India as ‘mostly a tourist’s peek
at the ancient magnificence of Rajasthan’. Her travels reveal to her
a people who are dignified, spiritual, and physically beautiful.
‘They love to be photographed. They possess a nobility about them that
seems to sweep straight back to the Rajputs. To walk into a street in Rajasthan
is to walk into an exotic paint box of vivid colour; turbans, saris, and veils
in hues one can only dream of.’
Once back home in Suffolk, looking through the sketches and photographs, Valerie
searches for a direction for her work; how can she express her vivid impressions
about such a rich and mystifying culture? Very quickly she knows it is the
people – ‘those warm, generous, colourful human beings’
– upon whom she wants to focus, in particular the women whose dignity
she found particularly inspiring.
‘I look through my photographs and I see I’ve taken many portraits,’
she says. ‘Faces full of humour, strength and stoicism. Faces that could
tell a thousand stories; that tell of hardship, of joy, and of a peace which
comes from a core of true spirituality.’
As a result of this insight, she has built up a series of watercolours, collagraph
prints and mixed media pieces in which she tries to convey ‘something
of the indomitable spirit’ she witnessed there.
‘I hope to be able to express what it is about India that gets under
the skin and seduces one to the extent that despite the sadness and powerlessness
one feels about the poverty, the begging and the dirt, it is almost impossible
to leave.’
Annie Owen
Of the three artists, Annie Owen has the greatest experience of the Indian
sub-continent, visiting so frequently over the last 17 years that she even
speaks some Hindi.
‘From my first odd conversation on Indian soil with the official checking
my passport, I was hooked. The heady combination of uniformed officialdom
(worn with flip-flops) and uninhibited curiosity, charmed me and made immediate
sense to me. India has made sense to me ever since.’
Working variously as a photo editor, photographer and artist, she has visited
and been impressed by beautiful and fascinating monuments throughout most
of the sub-continent. Yet, it’s the ‘bits in between’ that
captivate her most.
She turns down offers of Maruti cars and air-conditioned rooms, preferring
where possible a sturdy Ambassador car rumbling and bouncing along Indian
country roads with lungfuls of air, albeit dusty; and the soothing whirring
of a fan as she later lies on the clean sheets of a rock hard bed in a quirky
Indian hotel.
‘India makes me happy; it is as simple as that.’
She travels with her camera and keeps a full journal as she moves from place
to place. Her camera, she says, ‘is a positive part of me. Women giggle
as they see themselves and men rush for their turbans and stand erect and
unsmiling as I take their picture. There is little possessiveness. To see
themselves is pleasure enough and they walk away happy.’
When she returns a year or so later, people recognise her and wring her hand
to welcome her back. She has completed three charity cycle rides in India.
On more than one occasion she has been stopped and offered food, accommodation
and donations from people who have a fraction of what is considered basic
in the UK. ‘I try not to confuse the issue by weeping at the touching
generosity of these offerings,’ she says.
Each time she returns home to Suffolk, Annie realises how India has affected
and changed her. ‘It has been a joy for me to try to express this in
my painting and printmaking. I love the marks made on shrines in temples all
over India. I am calmed by the ritual and ceremony of the pious from all walks
of life and have explored this in my paintings. I relish the exuberant colour
that is everywhere in India and allow it to suggest my palette.’
Annie was married in India. ‘I love my (English) husband dearly,’
she says, ‘but sometimes I think that part of my heart will stay forever
in India.’
Jennifer Hall
Born in South Africa, sculptor and printmaker Jennifer Hall is no
stranger to the everyday impressions which somehow stamp themselves onto a
person’s memory. ‘That rich earthy smell that rises from the steaming
earth after a sudden deluge,’ she recalls. ‘The pitter-patter
of rain on a corrugated iron roof and the sounds of the night that filter
through the windows.’
It was no surprise then that she was instantly mesmerized by India’s
uniqueness on her visit to Rajasthan. ‘I’d been warned that I
would find it an amazing place, full of rich sensations on the one hand and
great poverty and hardship on the other. I can truthfully say that from the
moment I walked out of the airport into the hot, dusty air of Delhi, I became
immersed in India – even as a privileged Western visitor.’
She remembers ‘a mass of humanity, the noise of the tooting horns of
cars and lorries constantly battering at your ears, the smells from cooking,
the spices and the dusty streets. These are impressions laid out like Christmas
presents for an artist’s senses.’
And, surprisingly, she says, ‘amongst all this mass of activity, there
will be a moment of stillness which allows one to catch one’s breath
and ponder.’
A bronze caster as well as printmaker, Jennifer’s art reflects the events
of her life – incorporating both the good and the bad – and as
a result much of what she produces is about loss, trace and memory.
‘It is also about line, pattern and shape; links which happen, for instance
the colourful fabric worn by the elegant Indian women and how it has shaped
and affected their lives.’
In amongst all of the richness of India, there are sights that are difficult
for her to come to terms with. ‘The sight of a mother holding her baby
and begging for food,’ she says. ‘And of children asking for money
and being told by our guide not to give, not to help, to just ignore them.’
The opportunity to help arose when she and Valerie sat down and talked about
their experiences. Thus was born the idea of doing an exhibition in aid of
ASHA for Education, a secular organization dedicated to change in India by
focusing on basic education. When Annie subsequently joined the group, the
three artists’ work seemed perfectly balanced.
‘It will be a tiny drop in the ocean I know, but at least it is a drop.’
Valerie, Annie and Jennifer’s exhibition, Kala Yatra, means,
literally, a journey of art. The exhibition will be on from October 30 to
November 8 during London’s Asian Art Week, at the MP Birla Millenium
Art Gallery, The Bhavan Centre, Institute for Indian Art and Culture, 4a Castletown
Road, London W14 9HE. Contact the artists on: Valerie
Armstrong, Annie Owen, Jennifer
Hall. Learn more about ASHA on Asha
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