Beyond the seemingly real world of appearances and the domain of intellect or reason, which comply with the confirmatory rationale of what is sensed and perceived, there lies a plane of subtle reality of an archetypal nature, as through pre – ordained to affect the surface reality. This archetypal reality is what may be called a ‘mythic – world’.
The physical phenomena characterising the human – drama are nothing but the affectation of the deep rooted psychic structures of mythological origin. This ‘mythic’ seems to have been manifested time and again in ages past as well as the present, ever since the evolutionary cyclical process gradually unfolded the unconscious. It’s emergence or manifestation, most of the time, is too ‘coloured’ to be obviously revealed by the time it descends into the material plane. The senses and also, the otherwise presumed, potential reason are inept in their respective powers to cognise and transcribe a logical assimilation to affirm its truth. Thus myth remains presumed as an effusion of a ‘hyper-imaginative.
Strangely it is a matter of coincidence then; if we believe in reason only; that these ‘mythic-effusions’ should have always found a profound expression in the words and forms of poets and painters!
The oracy of Homer pronouncing prophetically the fate and destinies of the tragic heroes in Iliad and Odyssey; the haunting encounters of Dante in his divine comedy revealing the pagan vision of a spiritual dimension of the universe; and of the more recent past, the massive, yet submissive enigmatic protagonist – the Minotaur of Picasso in some of his works, recreate in rhapsody and ferocity, a gamut of myths, all pervading, yet veiled to the rationalising intellect engaged in the fallacy of appearances.
The Myths continue to appear consciously or unconsciously, sometimes through the blind intuition of an artist, constantly undergoing a change of form, thereby corresponding to the peculiarities of the individual. Querozito De Souza’s works recall an immediate reconciliation with the mythological plane, on the one hand and on the other, allude to introject and associate with the real’ . Some of them grapple in a religious dialectic and others recapitulate the endeavours of personal life.
These recent works on display are a part of Querozito’s Oeuvre which comprises oils, lithographs and drawings executed from 1990 to 1992. The works are amply suggestive of the non descript depositions of this young artist.
In his early works, the prime source of inspiration in his creations was nature. Obvious in that since his childhood he has been closely associated with the sea; the roar and gust of wild, endlessly surmounting waves touching the subconscious, thus establishing an intimate communion with it. ‘ A spate of memories establishing still upsurge and merge as the waves appear and disappear’. Querozito recalls, restating a triste nostalgia. The romantic’ had set in then, blended with semi abstraction, thus formulating his pictorial idiom. His pallette, in those works being primary with tonal variations suitable to a particular colour harmony. These early indulgences seem to have taken a drastic turn in the present works, specially, the lithographs which mark a transitional phase reflecting maturity. The transition has hitherto occurred during his post graduation period at Shantiniketan from 1989 – 90 which is the outcome of the fruitful interaction resulting in conclusive dialogues with Prof. Sanat Kar.
His Prints show a technical accomplishment and profusion of concepts excellently embedded in forms wherein content defines the mode of expression. A constant and ceaseless experimentation in Lithography has made him skilled printmaker. Certain motifs like the bull and the phallus recurrently occur, transmute and assuming a visceral touch in the works such as ‘Deviation form Rectitude’, ‘The Reflection’ ’The Pseudo Drama – III’. The content is shaped by the psycho-ethical conflicts that the artist is constantly engulfed in. Sometimes it is the unresolved religious dogma seeking a solution through pictorial statement as in the Lithograph, ‘Prejudice of The Lord’ one of his best prints done in 1991. The undefined space and the subtle blend of colour with the suspended form almost recreate in abstraction, the resurrection of Mathias Grunewald. Two other prints such as ‘Enraptured by Time’ and ‘Reconciled Elements’ are successful experiments in the creation of texture a deviation into total abstraction.
Querozito’s paintings thematically border on both mythology and the immediate reality he is surrounded by. In some, the myth is manifested unconsciously. ‘The Three Graces’ is an unusual depiction of this constantly portrayed theme in the history of art which immediately reflects an iconographical shift. The otherwise independently standing graces are interlocked in a composite form the other half of the composite form being achieved by the introduction of a more than life size mirror. ‘The Three Graces’ assumes a meaning through a pictorial synecdoche, where by a part symbolises the whole. The other paintings ‘The garden of Eden’, ‘An Annihilated Idol’ relate to biblical themes but shaped through a personal imagery presenting a dialectic that the artist is involved with. The later theme in its original sense relates to the even at the river Gaellie, where Christ meets the fisherman. But in the above painting it totally undergoes a transformation iconographical. The amputed body encircled and wrapped by a fish form is intended to give a feminine quality to the form, indicating an androgynous whole. The ‘anima and ‘animus’ – the feminine and masculine quality of the soul are fused in one form in his works.
Querozito intuits the human, the religious, and also the mythical characters in his paintings as ell as his prints there by creating a labyrinth of meaning and associations and creating deliberately a sense of ambiguity. However his ethical doubts impose a hesitation in the artist or so it seems, thereby limiting a form in its fullest of expressiveness. This is obvious in ‘From an Interior’. Nevertheless the pictorial form imbibes and offers multiple layers of meaning and retains plausible interpretative quality.