National 5 (Spotlight Weekly)

EXPOSITION
Bodhi and Buddha

Artists’ highlight the increased need and importance of Buddha’s teachings in the present context

By DEWAN RAI

The solo painting exhibition by Prakash Chandwadkar at Siddhartha Art Gallery on October showcased portraits of Buddha in different moods at various time and stages of his life. It depicted the incarnation of God in obtainable forms and images. That was only the appealing part of the work to draw the viewers into the world of spiritual reality.

The portraits in the paintings have come out of an artist’s imagination inspired by Buddha’s teachings and philosophy that have immense power to change the world into a peace zone. Buddha in meditative posture in pensive mood shows his calm and cool attitude. He is the enlightened one. He is the one who could emancipate mankind from all the greed and avarice of the materials and earthen luxuries.

Chandwadkar was born in Auraungabad of Maharastra, India. He first encountered with the Buddha of Ajanta and Elora in India. As he came to Nepal, the birthplace of Buddha, seven year ago, he could experience the influence of his philosophy stronger here than in his own native. That was what inspired him to explore more about Buddha, specifically his philosophy. If life is a journey, he encountered with Buddha at different time and stages of his life in his voyage to explore the essence of the philosophy. The exhibition under the theme “Personal Encounters on the Journey of life” is all about the encounters with the enlightened and illustrious one.

Therefore, the Buddha in his paintings is not from the parable about him we have heard about. The portraits were the emergence of Buddha within a common human being; in truth it is a nature of all the beings in the universe. “I believe everyone in this world can be the Buddha,” he asserted. “It is all about the process of life.” In his view “the nature of Buddha lies in every human being but needs to be realized and felt within our soul.”

The time span between the birth and death is called life. As we come on this earth the changes takes place in every moment. We go through varied stages of emotional turmoil sometimes through the path of love, at other times through hatred. Jealousy, greed, aggression, avarice, generosity and all the other feelings are components of life. In the cradle-to-grave journey we encounter with many such embarrassing moments.

At a time when the whole world is embroiled in the war and hit by terrorism, it sounds anachronistic to talk about Buddha. When the bullet speaks the truth, his preaching seems clumsy and unwanted. The causes of all the sorrow come from within us. The desire to hoard the property and achieve power has driven the man mad. We have perhaps murdered the Buddhatwa within us.

The universal Buddha appears at various places differently. The artists in the exhibition included the images of Buddha from various parts of the earth – from Nepal, Tibet, China, India, Thailand, Kampuchea (now Cambodia) and Borrobodur in Indonesia.

“Prakash seeks render the Buddha as a human figure. Each painting captures a different mood of the Buddha. Prakash paints the Buddha as a simple young Prince before attaining enlightenment, as the embodiment of male/female self, as the Buddha in meditation, as a compassionate individual spreading the message of peace. For his ultimate aim with this exhibition is to create paintings that instill and evoke a feeling of peace and meditation,” said Sageeta Thapa, director of the Siddhartha Art Gallery.

Chandwadkar, famous in abstract paintings, this time has tried his hand in fine art. Still the golden Bodhi leaves (peepal tree leaves) associated with the enlightenment of Buddha brought from Thailand adorn his canvases. The splattering of various bright colors in some of the canvas symbolizes the vague and transitional thinking at the time of meditation.

The British ambassador to Nepal Keith Bloomfield had opened the exhibition that continued for the month of October.