Kolkata artist Anirban Mishra takes us through the train of thought, about silence and the loneliness of the human condition, that translates into his visual artworks. We are grateful to him for sharing his thoughts and feelings on these pages.

I fall into deep silence. My works also keep the silence. I belong in between silence. Even my society falls into the deep pain of silence. But my surroundings are crowded.

I am ALONE

I am ALONE

I am ALONE

I stand in between the CROWD

But I am still ALONE

WHY DO I FALL INTO THIS DEEP SILENCE? WHY AM I ALONE? AND WHY ARE YOU ALONE?

My work is based on landscapes. I try sowing a lonely landscape.

I like to represent the landscape that I belong to. After many civilizations have gone by, today we stand in the ‘modern society’. This society is full of stylization. It is modern and civilized, but it also falls into the deep pain of silence. Our daily life has very much changed from previous times. We are all very busy in our own work. From morning to night, we live in a world forged by technology, and now robots do everything like humans. If we want anything, we can get it with money. We live our daily lives, but we never look at human emotions.

WHERE IS TRUE LOVE?

WHY ARE WE NOT GIVING ATTENTION TO HUMAN EMOTION?

WHERE IS OUR SENSIBILITY?

WHY ‘SILENCE’ IN MY WORK?

From the very beginning I have been very interested in making art. In my childhood I always created landscapes. My interests have also been in science. I was always interested in knowing about human existence. Years back I started to read about our Universe, and it was the first time I saw many natural colours in the galaxy. It was the first time I learned how to create colors that look natural and also the value of color layers. During this time I wondered how I could relate my paintings to the natural elements of our Universe. When I look at our planet Earth I feel that our Mother is EARTH. When I look at the size of the Earth it seems very big, but when I compare the size of Earth to the size of the Universe, the Earth looks like a single small stone. She is moving around the Sun in her own orbit, but she is still alone. And if we compare our existence to the whole universe, we are just microscopic organisms:

UNIVERSE— EARTH — LAND — COUNTRY — STATE — CITY —BUILDING — ME

From the Universe to my surroundings there are long distances. I find some kind of loneliness everywhere. All the particles in the Universe are alone. They are all suffering from lack of identity. And when I look at myself, I ask: “Where am I? How can I find my identity?”

IF THE WAY IS BLANK
                     THEN WHERE AM I?
    DARK COVERED AROUND ME
AND I FADE AWAY.

I like to stand in between silence and try to feel the story of our nature. I feel that our nature tries to speak her own story. Sometimes I stand in front of crowds but I stay silent in my own self, trying to understand what the situation represents. Every situation speaks. I try to listen to it silently.

MY SPONTANEITY IS MY SILENCE

When I look at our modern civilization I feel that every corner of our society has fallen into the deep pain of silence. This silence makes us depressed, hopeless. This silence slowly moves our society toward death. And it creates forms of massive violence. To build our industrial society we are cutting down trees and damaging our land; it looks like death of existence.

As an art creator I try to express the loneliness of our society. I use different vanishing points to create different kinds of perspectives to make sense of wide spaces. I use different architectural plans to create another type of geometry. I draw buildings in different places to create large distances. I like acrylic and enamel colours, because of their plasticity. In between the SILENCE I am always in search of blue colours, becasue blue is a very emotional colour. It attaches with my emotions. But I feel depressed when I see blue fade into dark.

IF THE BLUE FADES INTO DARK

THE EMOTIONS VIBRATE

THIS VIBRATION MAKES ME DEPRESSED

I FEEL AGONY

For the support of the works I use paper, to represent the fragility of our society. And I try to represent the sensibility of our nature which is now fading due to the violence of the industrial civilization. I want to continue to work on Silence to find out more about it and go deeper into this topic.