Of art through a myriad of journals

By Rushda RAFEEK

What is art coursing through a vein relative of literature? Is the brush mightier than his pen? The year is something of the hazy 80’s. A schoolboy born in Quilon, Kerala and having moved to Bangalore at the age of three is seen cycling to school on the leafy thread of tarmac. It is quiet, green and tinged with an old world charm coalescing with the mossy mildewed walls crusted over the white. Consider the air slapped by a faint flowery breeze. On his way, the boy takes note of the flush stained morning, some sleepy clouds, a tatter of trees with fruit hanging lanternlike until some sudden scent of inspiration greets him like a strong hand.

He plucks each note with his eyes pregnant with detail as a girl would do marigolds with her bangled arms. Weaving smiles into his face he collects a great childhood under slivers of moonlight and diaries influenced by Anne Frank. This, all the way through led the boy turn his attention to visual journals where he worked his charms by layering sketches to add colour into the written atmosphere. Smelling his decision right, he stepped into the National Institute of Design in Ahmadabad to specialize in Animation Film Design.

TV shows

Drunk on the good wine of revelation spilt over those five years of learning, the boy leaves for Canada to design animated TV shows for children. When it fell upon him that the industry absorbed his soul like ink does to tissue, he decides to simplify his life nevertheless began to paint for a living sipping the summers of Canada and winters of India in equal fashion. Why? “Because I’m a tropical man,” exclaims Prashant Miranda who could have been spotted at the just concluded HSBC Colombo Fashion Week- the watchful artist, animator and scribe with a different twist of approach.

Dealt in the way it deserves, Prashant offers something like fresh water. Push aside the arm wide canvases, the usual swirls and abstracts danced by the brush. In the spring of discovering Prashant’s journals, you come across Ganga Mahal with so much subdue so much you can hear and sink into the ‘prose’ of the paused boats stirring in the hushed breath of the sewing waves and all this in a little handmade journal.

Other times you are ushered by scads of flight doodles or the results of a late train. Languidly, you are sucked by the pictorial episode of Lodi Gardens in Delhi, the Brief Garden jewelled with frondescence in Bentota, a Canadian university or the very careful observation of shoes left by someone mingled in a gathering to convey that something must be disjointed to merge with another dressing the very idea that surrounds our lives. Yes, Prashant’s paintings cultivate with a deeper message as deep as dreams.Most diarists and journal keepers do not so often wish to expose their private jot downs. At least I don’t and never will. Quite the meditative artist Prashant Miranda, one who travels religiously wider in length, is by means conducive to taking this human element through a traveller’s approach in a frizz of tender scribbles. To be clear, the keeping of journals counts to 18 years, which for him is a record and understanding oneself through many phases. He tells me that it initially began as “just a daily documentation of things happening around and as a way to practise drawing while at design school.”

His sketches breeze in like a bag of assorted sweets for the hungry eye. A part of it is devoured by a daub of water colours in balmy shades applied around a Brahmin darkly strong in skin under a meditative moon and by a few edges sit little inky writings that curl much like ribbons. “Keeping a visual journal forces me to observe things more carefully. It makes me scrutinise details of buildings, or characters in faces that I wouldn’t have noticed in the fleeting instant of a photograph” explains Prashant.

“Watercolour is also an immediate medium. It’s portable and all fits in a small bag. It dries quickly and can capture the essence of a scene sometimes in a few strokes. I also like the fact that I can use the water from that particular place, be it the sea, river, beer, wine etc, which infuses its energy into the painting.” He also mentions how these journals pull back the sentiments and memories of that place. “To ‘scribble’ and ‘describe’ comes from the word ‘scribe’…someone who documents things, and that’s how I feel too.”

Creations

There is something calligraphic and chimerical considering the purity of Prashant’s creations.

They are delicate as a kiss on one’s cheek, yet wet with detail. Given how well they touch the pith of one’s soul piercing in a soft way, they are impregnated with an inimitable charge. Some to be read in a thespian way.

Inventively challenged he has been deeply involved in a mélange of projects. Some of them you will see are manifested by ceramic paintings, post cards, illustrating children’s books, wedding invitation cards, strangely baby bed linen, stopmotion and also album covers of musician, Chris Bezant. In terms of considering how each step taken is new in discovery and broader by idea, “I’m intrigued by various mediums as means of an art form.

What drew me to animation was the fact that I could see my drawings come to life. That to me is magic!” He points out.

“I am old school. I find that a lot of crafts and art forms are dying because people don’t have the time to spend over these things. I still animate by drawing and painting every frame, which is 24 frames for one second of animation. That to me is craft.”

Expressions

Furthermore, whether the subject is influential or autobiographical, “there are various ways of expressing yourself and for me these expressions come out through painting,” Prashant goes to say. “I love to draw and paint. If I didn’t do it, I would die. So using my hands is primary important, but the forms the comes out would be different.

Sometimes, a simple drawing of an elephant gets me excited to translate it into ceramic plates. Or the water colours of old buildings of a particular place lend itself to postcards for that community. It seems to work hand in hand.

These things push me to try new methods of expressing myself which is somehow connected to my work.”

Piecing that note together, Prashant’s influences contain the celebrated works of Quentin Blake, Beatrix Potter, David Gentleman, Egon Schiele and Van Gogh among others. “Looking at Da Vinci’s journals was like looking into the mind of a genius,” he recalls.

“I have always been drawn to the rough watercolour studies done by artists before they do the final painting.

These studies seem to capture an energy and essence that seems more immediate and wholesome to me. Early travellers documented their explorations as botanical drawings or architectural drawings and these have always fascinated me.”

Energy

Besides this devotional unwavering practice done in a whimsical manner, one would notice Prashant is no single minded. You could capture a poet, a pianist sometimes a guitarist (when the piano is found uneasy to travel with), a singer and a cook within this bundle of energy.

He is consumed by the warmth of sharing recipes and maintaining a series of poetic letters that runs under the title “Harper and Madeline” in two of his blogs. “My friend Kalpana and I have been writing letters to each other in verse for over 17 years, under the names Harper Leaf and Madeline Weathers,” he unfolds. “This is also a form of documentation, except that it is done as poetry. It’s just another medium of chronicling our lives through a poetic correspondence.”

With one sketchbook at a time through a brush work of darling moments, Prashant for whom life should be still simple matterless of how ugly corruption’s stain blots out, prefers to smell the roses along the way in the bruised world that which notices not, what better it could offer. He would be best remembered as a traveller who painted like a diarist. Someone whose “sketchbooks have gone through quite an evolution from angst ridden deep dark drawings, to more of seeing the beauty that surrounds us.”

As a constant traveller, when asked how these places have gotten him to tell their exciting stories given their offering of unstable seasons, “both India and Canada have taught me a lot. I love both countries and it gives me a fresh perspective and objectivity when I travel back and forth.

It also helps me to appreciate certain things and not take other things for granted,” he reflects ruefully.

“For instance, it’s such a blessing to get fresh clean water drinking water out of a tap in Canada, and not just that you get hot water too at all times, that may not happen in certain parts of India. I feel there is so much to learn, and so much to see…so it’s always exciting.”

Just as his early kindergarten report cards were garlanded with commendation that he loved to draw, paint and sing, Prashant will continue to follow what was recognised in him so long ago.

With that, I learn Prashant means peace. Prashant Mahasagar in Hindi is the Pacific Ocean. I can see the schoolboy pour his breaths out to the road into the quietness of Bengaluru. I can hear his soft laughter meeting his face like water merging with the colour blue. That is enough. That is enough for the brush to unveil his graphical poetry.