Chandigarh, October 28, 2011: A look at Tejinder Kanda’s artscape brings one in an interface with myriad landscapes of transmuted imagery- colourful and misty with rain washed by-lanes, cloudy skyline, the distant horizon, semi rural semi urban ambience, villagers chatting interacting and busily engaged in their daily affairs, river banks and ghats, temples and worshipers, bells ringing and flags fluttering, lush green creepers winding their way up the windows, flowers in full bloom, the distant woods, mountains, hill tops and homes with their sloping roofs, people young and old, men and women- walking up and down the path, cyclists and rickshaws winding their way through puddles of water stirring the reflections of the goings on… . The grooves of the busy and buzzing work shift their locale and focus from one place or frame to another, as memories metamorphose into impressionist renderings. The shadowy figures merge with the landscape, bringing them alive in a dynamic imagery. The paintings interspersed with trees, hills, water, people, tea stalls, roadside gatherings or more intimate encounters, festive celebrations and happenings, part real part imagined, move from past to the present as memories transform into colourful canvases.
About the Artist
· It is said that every artist dips his brush in his or her own soul, and paints own nature into the pictures. And in Tejinder Kanda case he seems to dig into his recollection of a carefree childhood spent in the open fields and clean air of lush green rural Punjab as the spring for his art. Growing up in a remote area around Batala, the young Teji as he is fondly called even today, found “the smell of the soil and the huge wooden doors that I could not reach as a little boy fascinating” and loved watching his sister paint and mother make utilitarian artifacts in papier-mâché that were then used at home or sold in the market place. Given his deftness in drawing even as a child, it was not surprising that he decided to join the college of art in Chandigarh and took to painting as a profession.
· Shifting his base to Delhi Tejinder had to struggle and traverse through an art track that moved from nature and life studies followed by figuration and then experimentation in print making- primarily serigraphy and intaglio, he took to teaching art. Having married his classmate and artist Babita, he needed to make a living to keep his family afloat and continued with his teaching job for a decade before deciding to take a plunge and start afresh as a full time painter again. It is during this last phase that the artist discovered his nemesis in his current creative idiom.
· Traveling through the length and breadth of Punjab, Himachal, Rajasthan and Southern region and other parts of the country, visiting cities and sites of art historical interest, the artist took in the sights, sounds and smells of the places and the goings on in the streets and the by lanes, to subsequently represent and ‘quote’ them in his own ‘words’ and colours in these work. The cities of Amritsar and Batala, ancient caves of Ajanta and Elora, the temples of Badami and Sanchi, the pilgrim cities of Vrindavan and Banaras, hill towns of Chamba and Nainital; and the port cities of Mumbai and Kolkata all fall within his art track.
· A fascination for the ordinariness of people and the life as lived in the country’s numerous nameless urban villages is reflected in his imagery of the rickshaw pullers and street scenes. Gopurams, a recurring feature of Teji’s repertoire, show his interest in architectural motifs. There is an interesting mix of abstraction and realism interspersed with landscapes that add an ethereal touch to his work. A dramatic rendering of reflections in water and the play of light and shade are other familiar elements in much of his creative imagery.