Antar-Jyot: Jesal Carries The Flame of Instinctive Art Within

Fresh from a group show with her compatriots in “Enthralling Eight” – the beautiful and talented band of eight Amdavadi women watercolourists who muse together, learn together, work together and show their creativity together with that epithet – last fortnight, Jesal Dalal is back very soon with what could be the fifth solo show of her own exclusive water colour works.

Interestingly, Jesal’s show also comes in quick succession to the solo show of water colour works by Falguni Dalal which ended on Sunday

Titled “Antar Jyot – Revelations of Light Within” and meaning also the “flame (of love and spiritual peace) inside”, this show was opened at the Art Gallery in Amdavad ni Gufa campus by prolific and popular artist Nabibakhsh Mansoori in the presence of culturepreneur Mihir Gajrawala who also introduced the artist, and a substantial turnout of art lovers, Jesal’s friends, family and members of her own coterie of G – 8 . This G 8 is with whom Jesal has forged a lasting lifelong relationship.

Created for the mutual but passionate pursuit of watercolor art, this shared thrust, we can see, is taking the artist Jesal in longer strides of a career in expression through the aisle and art paper or canvas even as she has worked with other media before finding her mainstay with this medium.

An architect by education who pursued interior design practice briefly, Jesal shifted to painting on a long term basis after realizing her calling in the domain. Mentored by Bhavesh Zala and drawing inspiration from Natu Parikh from her early days in the water colour school, which is something she shares with her compatriots in G 8, Jesal is now known for her love for Nature in general and her skillful expression thereof, more so of the sky, sea, forests, hills, water bodies in their myriad colours per se or in their enchanting unison with each other and with the earth at the horizon, or even more.

Awarded by UNESCO for her work on Champaner heritage in Gujarat and International Water-colour Society of India, she is capable of painting scores and scores of the manifestations of this singularly unique imagery of this side of nature. Such imagery interestingly – as is proved yet again in the current show – never fails to touch a chord in the visitor-viewers for its sheer universality and innate potential that create impact on human mind that loves to be with the nature’s elements, even as rampant urbanization denies it access to such soulful sights.

To underscore this gigantic appeal of the Nature may one say, parallels, in fact, real and lively views of such mesmerizing imagery can also be seen in umpteen number of films from East and West that dwell even in passing or in implied references to the infinitely romantic, nostalgic, reflective or meditative impact created on the humans by such amalgamated interactions; of the forested nature, the sky, the sea, the sun and the earth, accentuated at sandhi-kaal, that is the times of the dawn and dusk!

Check out a song like Kahin Door Jab Din Dhal Jaye from the 1969 film Anand or a sequence from a David Lean film like Ryan’s Daughter and you will know what this means!

There is something about this phenomenon, so much so that painting the sky of different times of the day and night has been a pet activity for painters for a long time; the best example of which could be the well known “Starry Night” by Vincent Van Gogh. Then there is a whole lineage to cite and quote in this thematic branch of painting.

So no surprise that with her consistent focus on these permanent and enchanting elements around the principal element of Sky in her creativity, Jesal has rightly earned the reputation and identity of a pensive and meditative painter of water colours. With such credentials at her command, Jesal has widely participated in international biennales of the medium in recent years. And she has only one way to look – further and forward – as she enhances her expressive capabilities and strengths in the chosen realm with every show and confirms she’s not done yet, if you ask her about her course up next!

Her present show features fifty four Untitled but magnificent works, all of which vie for attention of the beholder for the visual appeal and aesthetics they enchantingly create. The works offer a range of colours from wavy and cool blues to warm crimsons and yellows .

The instinctive scheme of colours that emanate like the internalized “antar-jyot” of the artist on to the canvas, nay paper, amalgamate as one grand and flawless composition each time she works! The completed compositions embed and surround the constant elements of fancy of the artist which have unfailingly guided her to bring out hundreds of such  unique works in the recent years of her beautiful and unique creative journey!

What’s just wonderous is that the overarching subject lends itself in totality to a vast variation of these magical interactions of the elements through the brush strokes of the artist who worked through 2021 to 2023 to create this present engaging body of work on show.

These works have been created in different sizes from a miniature of about eight inches by five inches to a life size of six foot by four foot. This Magnum opus of six feet hangs in the centre of the gallery as a piece in testimony to barriers of size being broken in the size-sensitive medium of water colours. This incidence of broken glass ceilings is observed and strengthened with several other squarish works of “four foot by four foot” included in the display.

You have in between these two ends, other sizes of around 12 inches to 24 inches or in-betweens. Affordably priced, these soulful sights look easy to acquire for having a constant source of positive vibes of peace and tranquility on your walls!

All in all, the show offers a mesmerising trip to a wonderland of colourful charisma woven around the sky, the seas and the land’s end! One that needs to be viewed and to be internalised as an Antar-Jyot.

This must-go show is available till Sunday April 02.