Page 186 - Art-In-Vogue

 wAtERFALLS WATERCOLOUR
SS Bhatti  AN ODDYSSEY INtO MIND COMPUTER PAINTINg
Lives and works in Chandigarh, Punjab, India

THE ARTIST ONLINE www.drssbhatti.jogbir.com

ART and ARTISTRY: Art is self-expression. Its self-motivated aim is
to express, rather than to evoke, emotion. Art is created by an inner
compulsion; sustained by an inner conviction; and fulfilled by an inner
satisfaction. Art provides the most intense, concentrated, and sharply
focused of all the experiences available to man. An artist is "a man
exclusively possessed by the thing that is born and takes shape in his
hands, the thing he invents or (as Pablo Picasso used to say) finds”.
Faithful to "a fundamental and impatient temperament ... virtuoso or
actor ... he imperturbably exercises his powers of metamorphosis",
and cannot rest until he has transformed this temperament into the
strictness of form, by the intrinsic logic of creativity in which unbridled
imagination plays the key-role.
MY CREDO: Creativity is a perennial adventure into the realm of
the human spirit. Creativity consists of art and craft, representing
sensibility and design, and skill and dexterity, respectively. Art without be created in cement concrete would be different from what is possible
Craft can remain only in the area of aesthetic appreciation. Craft to do in wood or steel. The materials being rugged individualists leave
without Art often ends up as a juggler’s show of skill for its own sake. the imprint of their own mute personalities on the created artefact.
MY WORk covers wide-ranging themes and their variations. The It is left to an individual’s Creativity to exploit the intrinsic strengths
subject-matter varies from landscape, religion, and mythology, etc. to and weaknesses of the material chosen as a vehicle of Art. A poet can
abstraction, symbolism, metaphysics, etc. Depending on the theme, the express with relative ease what a painter will find some difficulty to do
materials and methods are changed to express it as aptly as possible. because the painter’s material is not as pliable as a poet’s. A sculptor’s
CREATIvITY is a Whole, born in the contemplative commingling of art is regulated by the laws of physical structure. It imposes its own
Sensibility and Design, and transcending its two constituent parts limitations on the nature and magnitude of the created artefact. An
- Art and Craft - as individual faculties/entities to move effortlessly architect’s job becomes more complex and comprehensive because
into artistic creation which lies in the realm of significance. Craft must his creativity deals with life and its myriad moods. Yet poetry is the
impose its own limitations on an individual’s Art. For example, what can
essential common element in all the afore-mentioned disciplines and,
indeed, in all others-it in the first place, a painting would be mere
blobs of paint, a sculpture an inert mass of clay or concrete or metal,
and architecture an unmoving assemblage of brick, mortar, and steel.
Creativity transforms human experience into an image. Contemplation
transforms an image into human experience-to the level of psycho-
spiritual (i.e. deeply internalized) instant seeing. Creativity is
distinguished from all fields of human endeavour by the qualitative
change it brings about in the artist’s and the viewer’s outlook, attitude,
and understanding through the silent language of the created artefact.
When a skill is used dexterously as a congenial means to an inspired
end, Creativity becomes its own spontaneous, soul-stirring expression.
Then, Art bodies forth as a significant image of that experience which
is born only within the unfathomed depths of the human soul-where
a continuous active silence dwells!

SS BHATTI: Architect with three PhDs and M. Arch. on Chandigarh’s Rock garden, Artist, Art Critic,
Educator, Poet, Mystic, Musicologist, Author. Published books and innumerable articles on Art,
Architecture, Poetry, Music, Environment, Religion, Criticism, etc.
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