Art, Nature and Myself (Shobha Ghare)

The artist communicates his ideas, feelings and attitude about something in the world that has aroused his artistic curiosity.

For me, the subject for my work of art is connected with nature in its broadest and purest sense.

I searched deeply through the various aspects of nature for my inspiration.

An artist’s and nature’s creative processes are similar. Light, colour, movement, space, matter, time and sound are fundamental to the creative processes of both. That’s how I developed a deep kinship with nature.

On the rain drenched meadows, one came across whole battalions of red velvety creatures (birbahuti) everywhere. We would collect these beautiful creatures wrapped in cotton in match boxes, and marvel at their delicate splendour. Large yellow frogs were always hopping around the ponds, on huge rocks on which chameleons were seen basking in the sun. Inside our court-yard, and around our house as well, there used to blossom flowers resembling an arrangement of butter fl ies in the sky. It was this omnipresent spectacle of love and delicate discipline in the plant and animal world all around that opened my inner creative eye. It was the inward vision which enabled me to witness that boundless bliss of beauty which knows no bitterness, no possessive selfishness. This initiation into the mystery of creation was continued later in the historical city of Gwalior and also in Bhopal, the city of hills and lakes. I am grateful to the inspiring infl uences of these cities.

For me, creativity is that God-inspired event which is born out of universal joy. This abounding joy in nature becomes my inspiration. It is this spirit of joy which arouses my feelings and stirs my heart to seek expression. This eager and restless urge of my heart to express itself is a never-to-be-satisfied longing which I have experienced in everything I have done so far. It is this unfulfilled longing which has inspired every new act of creation that has been realised through me.

This inner turmoil is the fi rst stage of my work. It constitutes a gesture of response to the boundless gift of love I have received from the silence of the hills, from the music of the waves, from the rays of the sun, the whisperings of the winds and the twittering of the birds. I am merely the reason, the instrument of what I have received.

Shobha Ghare
Bhopal, 2006