The Jaipur paintings
Why do we look to the sky for answers? Is it because we are overwhelmed by its vastness or is it just impossible to grasp such scale?
As the sun moves away and darkness fills the space light had occupied, we are compelled to adjust our behaviour. Under cover of darkness we are left with a universe of stars, planets, galaxies, light travelling from millions of years ago. What questions, what answers does this space reveal? What stories does it tell?
In the Jaipur Observatory “Jantar Mantar” there are nineteen astronomical instruments built by the Rajput King, Sawai Jai Singh II in 1734. The name Jantar Mantar comes from Sanskrit and is interpreted as; instrument, consult and calculate. Enormous concave dishes hollowed out of the ground laid with smooth white marble surfaces and embossed geometric lines. Inscriptions and calculations brought into being by human curiosity predicting time, movements of the sun, earth, and planets. The wisdom of the past blinks at us from dish to dish, city to city, coordinates join, shape, distance, angles, regularity, contrast; a language of time and measurement is mapped.
It is this continuous rhythm of our existence, reaching back through the stars, that is so compelling. The pulse of the solar system enters these huge marble dishes and casts its mark, the moon’s darkness constantly giving way to its counterpart the sun, pursued by its soul the shadow. Dancing under the sunlight’s dazzling power, shadows lay down their lines of perfect calculation, signifying long-held knowledge of the cosmos.
Captivated by these stunning giant instruments, the vibrancy, colour, noise, and bombardment of the senses of Rajasthan, this series of Jaipur paintings are memories that have stayed with me, memories translated through the visual making process and captured, like a moment in time.
Unavailable. Sold to private collection.
Oil on canvas
120cm x 120cm x 45cm