The artist, the canvas and the mediums used for the expression are all tools that erupt from silences. All these beings are molded together to give life to the object which otherwise would remain inanimate. But where does this life come from? For different artists the core of creativity begins and ends in various forms. And yet in the history of art, certain artists in some strong or mild forms tend to overlap with each other in their way of life, artistic expressions or mediums even though they lived decades apart.
V.S.Gaitonde, the great Indian artist was known for the source of silences from which his art was produced. He embraced silence in his life and his paintings shone of it. Calm, still and deeply engaging, he made the viewer connect what he felt from his view of the sea or his understanding of the Zen philosophy and Indian theologies. Gaitonde was not just a painter whose canvases erupted from silences. He was a man who chose to live among the sheets of his silence. Imagine a man covered in the blanket of silence in a world buzzing of the noises of emerging art, revolution and consequential changes around the world. He lived in the world but often chose to disconnect. His art speaks volumes of a depth where one can get lost in the volcano of creativity. When an artist lives what he paints then we can strongly understand that the artist lived to paint.
Vincent Van Gogh, the most world famous artist lived in the blanket of poverty. But we speak of him in the article not about how poor or unrecognized he was while he was alive. Rather we discuss him to point out a byproduct that evolved from it. That strange and familiar artist's silence that buzzes with creativity and an unquenchable thirst to paint. Van Gogh used silence as the solvent in his paintings. Vincent towards the end of his life dreamt, ate and produced paintings. He lived each day where it began and ended with a painting. If you look at the historical data, we can see that Van Gogh completed the last hours of his life with a painting. A painter who painted paintings till his last breath. He is a unique artist that mixed art, love and the reciprocation of life all into one source of creation.
One thing the viewer can recognize in this is the role of silence in the life of both these artists. They lived in two different eras but silence was a key that turned their vault of imagination and creativity. Gaitonde felt the silence from an early age of his life. He then allowed the flow of the silence to gently pour itself into his canvases in the form of colour and formless strong marks. The silence followed him in his lifestyle and till his end. Van Gogh erupted from the silence the world forced him to live in. Penniless, hungry and living almost by himself with few people whom he called friends. He began to paint voluptuous colorful paintings way ahead of the time he lived in. This advancement came from the soil of silences that he nurtured being surrounded by such circumstances. Both Gaitonde and Van Gogh painted silences or creativity that emerged from it. The world has therefore got the opportunity to witness paintings of great solitude in extremely different outputs. The fact that solitude is an underlying cause related to an artist in the past and will do so in the future also.
