Article from exhibition brochure written by Neeta Om Prakash
It’s a challenge for an artist to work in an unusual medium and overcome the limitations of it. There are many mediums and techniques traditionally used by craftsmen, like terracotta (pottery); repou’sse (embossing on metal sheets) used for making idols, ritualistic objects for doors of temples; metal casting by cire – perdue process (lost wax process) from Bastar (M.P); weaving (on the loom as well as macrame); embroidery etc.. 20th century artist has taken up the challenge of working in such mediums & raising the created product from the level of craft to fine art. This kind of challenge was taken up by Indian artists due to the identity crises passed by the International art scene. Artists of today’s generation adopts to work in traditional medium purely with the interest of exploring it. Though for an artist having mastery over the medium is a must it remains secondary when it comes to expression. Liesl Cotta De Souza has put in hard efforts to explore the challenges of the traditional medium of embroidery (thread on cloth) conventionally used in making tapestries. She has attempted to defy the convention to create a work of art. Her indulgence and perseverance certainly needs an appraisal for elevating the craft to the level of art full of creative promises. Her present oeuvre is an outcome of long and arduous preoccupation with embroidery. This medium demands tremendous patience and hard work.
MEMOIRS SENSUAL & SUBLIME BY NIYATEE SHINDE
Querozito DeSouza’s recent works continue to be an effortless coalescence of the mythical and the real. By every standard he now has a uniquely definable style; a style that he has now perfected. Poignant with layers of suggestion and meaning, this body of work defines a new energetic reality and unique to this new energetic reality is a sense of weightlessness.
‘The Mythical and the Real’
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.
Verses from Yesteryears
What if the painted surface is reality? A question that perturbs and raises an eyebrow. The answer to this lies within the realms of the painting. The painting reveals a pictorial reality that transmits the truth in a living body interpreted by the devouring and probing eyes of the artist.
The process of painting for me is unrevealing myself and rendering nuances from mythology, nature and life’s drama through the body. Relatively speaking the paintings are also a portrayal of relationships between man, animal and inanimate objects. As a lover of nature and a lover of seeing myself unfold to create another of these creations thus bringing alive another impeccable work of art.
NEETA OM PRAKASH 1997
Ever since man started giving tangible forms to his ideas female figure got a significant role to play. Whether man wanted to offer his obeisance to the fertility aspect either of nature or of man; or the creative faculty personified, a female figure has always been an universal symbol of motherhood. Female figure whether nude or clothed has also been the representation of sensuous erotic, grotesque, repulsive feelings. It is also associated with the destructive aspect as witch and femme – fatale, depending upon the artists experience, associations, upbringing, ideology in which he believes; which consciously or unconsciously determine the artistic expression.
HERE THERE EVERYWHERE by NEETA OM PRAKASH 1998
Printmaking as a medium of expression has already gained an immense popularity. With the advent of Modern Art it assumed an independent status with in exhaustive experimentation and exploration of its medium. There are artists who have chosen printmaking as a sole medium of expression dedicating their entire energy in this medium alone. With the coming of computers the printmaking medium has seen a further extension creating digitally enhanced prints. Querozito De Souza is one of the artist from Goa who has been consistently working in printmaking medium maintaining a purist approach.
IMAGES by OM PRAKASH 2000
A work art by itself is an entity. It intrinsically invites a response from the onlooker and engages him in a state of interaction with it ultimately inducing into him a positive experience qualified as an Aesthetic experience. The artist in a specific state of mind is preoccupied by such experiences and is compelled to materialize the experiences by his very virtue of being an artist. He transforms his free imagination onto a chosen medium using his skill according to the facility offered by that medium. His triumphant moment is when he is able to overcome the limitations of the medium and achieve the desired results a successful transcription of a conceived image, imagery or ideas in a material form.
IMAGES by FATIMA COFAN FEIJOO 2000
The pictorial trajectory of Querozito is described first of all by a connected symbolic narration with mythology. It is the poetic expression of the affective reality of the human being. The spirituality in his work is pronounced by that use of elements from mythology, making this a resource to introduce us within the depth of the subconscious mind of the world that the sacred and profane are united, they are juxtaposed and they are interlaced. Querozito believes in the power of myths, thus his compositions are drawn up as a ritual to wake up in watching the emotions through the winding and sculptural outline with which his subjects are equipped. His work is thought ritually, and is pronounced in his charged winding lines of symbolism.
BODY MASK by RANJIT HOSKOTE 2007
Querozito De Souza’s recent paintings, developed in pen-and-ink with watercolour on canvas board, are shaped by an engraver’s passionate fineness. It is the striking, eddying, whirring line that substains these paintingsand is their key strength; indeed, it sometimes has the effect of making their colour, vivid and insistent as it is, seem purely heraldic or even superfluous. This is not mere happenstance: we must remember that the Goa-born artist served his apprenticeship at Shantiniketan, and is an inheritor of its lively graphics tradition. He displays the print-maker’s special understanding of how to translate line into mass, of how to render a maze of markings into the concrete occupancy of space.