NATIONAL8 (Spotlight Weekly]

An Artist's Diary

An long-time resident of Kathmandu creates portraits of the city's people

BY AKSHAY SHARMA

The quest to understand colors has always baffled humans. Painters try to capture color and express it with a punch. Regardless of the medium, creating the right colors and capturing the textures are surely are not tasks cut out for amateurs.

Last week SPOTLIGHT spoke artist Carolyn Boch, who launched "A Diary Of Portraits" in the capital. A resident of Nepal for 20 years, Carolyn created these portraits over five years. She spontaneously invited people in Kathmandu to pose for her and tried to capture the characteristics that their faces radiated. Explaining how art came to her life, Carolyn says, "Even as a child, I used to scrape on my mother's furniture, so I think art was inborn in me."

Artist Boch : Inspired by people

Referring to a painting entitled "Rainy Day Women", which has a price tag of thousands of rupees, and its relevance to the Bob Dylan song, Carolyn says, "The woman in the painting is very solemn. There is a rainy sadness to her, which is the reason for the title. I also saw a part of myself in there as in the Bob Dylan song, which has a meaning similar to that of the painting and the subject."

Describing what attracted her to the Nepali people as the subject of her paintings, Carolyn says, "Perhaps it's the same thing that attracts me to Nepal. The open hearts and honesty of the Nepali people. They don't hide their own true character that I hear they do in the West. And because of that, it's easier to pick out Nepali subjects."

She says her paintings "are not Nepali paintings, it's only the Nepali people that I paint. When I look at these people I am not looking at superficial looks, I'm looking for what's inside them."

"Because of Westernization, people tend to look at an image that they think is attractive and they lose their own truth within themselves. And the Nepali people I have painted are not trying to look like anything but themselves."

Carolyn organizes creative Mandals workshops at the Himalayan Buddhist Center at Kamaladi in Kathmandu and abroad. Asked how she visualized art in childhood, Carolyn says, " I have strong feelings for colors and I think I'm a very visual person. As a child I was moved by colors. Words and intellect moved me less than what I saw. I was moved more by the visual aspects in life."

"1981, I was sitting in a restaurant overlooking Rani Pokhari and I was looking at the pond and the fences that surround it. I was looking at people walking past it. Some people were moving pretty fast and other people moving as they would -- and that was about the first time three-wheelers came into the valley. People started to move in their pace as the influx of these vehicles increased," says Carolyn.

"I can still visually connect to that point," she remembers of the old Katmandu. "It was like watching a film-strip where one person is moving really fast and the others are walking behind them, as if Kathmandu was just another village. It must have been the beginning to what we have now."

Which of her paintings would she describe as her best? "I wasn't respecting my work. I was just using it as an exercise. Later on, I began to accumulate these works and realized I could earn respect for what I'm doing. I think my later paintings are more developed and more respected."

Asked how she sees the future of Nepali artists, Carolyn says, " I am excited that art has become so important to Nepal and there are so many venues for artists to exhibit their work. Years ago there were only a couple of galleries, but now there are so many promising young artists who are very actively organizing show. I find this very interesting."

She adds, " I think the Nepali people are creative and that is very healthy."

"I just came back from the United States and put together this exhibition in three days. I invited a lot of people. I would have liked to have an opening, but I didn't. This is my first art show and I have a whole new perspective on the people's points of view towards art shows. " Carolyn's paintings were on exhibition until December 31 at the New Restaurant at Summit Hotel.