Blog
'Roar Like a Paintbrush' - an introduction
21/01/2016
When I visited the City palace last February and stumbled on the dark chamber with the agents' photos I could not have forseen what would develop. A year later, I'm about to take my third trip to India, with my first solo exhibition outside England coming up in Udaipur. This blog will fill in how this came about and when I've caught up, I'll go onto what I've been reading and looking at and how my painting/thinking has developed.
Firstly I want to describe the chamber where I first came across the photographs. The Palace has a big isitoric colleciton of photos, discovered in manyshoeboxes and now organised into a splendid archive and exhibition, with a book called 'Long Exposure' to accompany it. Serious-faced Indian princes gaze haughtinly at you, first in sepia then painted colour then ful colour.Many were keen photographers themselves.
In a small dingy room with a pair of magnificent painted doors 18 photos are lined up smartly in their wooden frames. When you inspect them, you see how some have their moustaches and topknots carefully touched up, faint lids are embellished with eyeliner. The court artists haven't gone as far as the full colour treatment that elsewhere turns a photo into a full painting. The faces of the agents and residents look at and past you, faces from England looking out at India.
When I first saw them I felt how far from home they were, how far from life, how far even from sunshine and fresh air. At that point I was conmpletely ignorant of the history of the British in India, and over the next few months have been discovering how abysmally Britain came to treat India.
Firstly I want to describe the chamber where I first came across the photographs. The Palace has a big isitoric colleciton of photos, discovered in manyshoeboxes and now organised into a splendid archive and exhibition, with a book called 'Long Exposure' to accompany it. Serious-faced Indian princes gaze haughtinly at you, first in sepia then painted colour then ful colour.Many were keen photographers themselves.
In a small dingy room with a pair of magnificent painted doors 18 photos are lined up smartly in their wooden frames. When you inspect them, you see how some have their moustaches and topknots carefully touched up, faint lids are embellished with eyeliner. The court artists haven't gone as far as the full colour treatment that elsewhere turns a photo into a full painting. The faces of the agents and residents look at and past you, faces from England looking out at India.
When I first saw them I felt how far from home they were, how far from life, how far even from sunshine and fresh air. At that point I was conmpletely ignorant of the history of the British in India, and over the next few months have been discovering how abysmally Britain came to treat India.
