An Artist For Nature

Mesmorized by the light catching the waves and the foam breaking on the shores of the remote Keri beach in Goa, a young boy gazed out to sea and an artist was born. 

For Subodh Kerkar, Nature is both theme and medium for his artwork. He gathers mussel shells and assembles them in the sand to mimic the waves through shape and shadow… he stands fishermen in the sand to form the shape of a boat… he uses mirrors to catch the memory of the sunset… he recalls the great Indian poet Rabrindath Tagore “Waves write their poetry on the sand. Not satisfied, they wipe them away and write them again and again.” 

Art As Meditation

Much of Kerkar’s artwork is in the moment. Much like the sand mandalas that Tibetan Buddhists painstakingly create and then almost as soon as they finish, they brush the coloured sand away - their art a process itself – Kerkar’s work is a meditation.

It is a meditation on time. A meditation on the cycles of nature. Moon and the Tides is a beautiful example of this – a perfect circle of shells assembled at the shoreline creating a fat full moon, as the tide comes in the shells slowly go back to the ocean.

These works are ephemeral, but Kerkar does freeze them in photographs. Works like The Fishermen And The Boat (using men to create the form of the boat) and Sea Anemone (using mussel shells and light in the sand) are art installations first and photographs second. Kerkar is an installation artist, who can luckily capture these stunning installations in rich black and white photographs.

Kerkar’s Process

Kerkar started out with simple watercolours. Capturing the ocean and the boats – these are the language of his artwork. Then he started to simply paint the elliptical forms that the boats made or the way the light hit the surface of the boat. Then he started collecting the wooden fishing boats themselves, sawing them in half, standing it on end and lighting it from the inside to resemble a wave. Then most recently he has started to use the human form – the fishermen become the boat itself, their arms the oars. Next he wants to play with the human form resembling sea creatures.

His Work 

“Art installations on the beach attract people who would never step into a gallery. It opens art to a wider audience,” says Kerkar. He wants to create a sea art festival – Ocean Odyssey, invite other artists and the public to contribute. He can foresee a kilometer of cable hanging along the beach adorned with lamps all designed by members of the public.

Or using the idea of ‘wiping your slate clean’ sending out a thousand slates and inviting people to write or draw on them. “I want to make people think. I work with Nature and generally landscape painting is apolitical. I infuse politics into the landscape.”

Already he has gathered 1000 school children on the Mandovi Bridge, overlooking Panjim, Goa’s capital as they held up banners saying ‘no to nuclear arms’.

Inspired by the Tibetan prayer flags ‘lungta’ he wants to hang 1000 flags along the beach in Karnataka near the largest Tibetan monastery, as it is believed that the wind carries the prayers to be answered.

It will be called Oceanic Prayer for the Snow and it will be a prayer for peace in Tibet inspired by a poem by the Dalai Lama. And again everything comes back to the sea, as Dalai Lama means ‘Ocean of Wisdom’.

The first hundred flags will be dipped in bright turquoise dye, the second batch a lighter distillation, the third lighter still, until the last hundred are just white, as Tibetans believe that as the prayer flags fade the prayers are answered.

Colour will play a big role in another new piece Kerkar is creating. Holi is a big festival in India, where people gather together to throw coloured powder at each other.

To celebrate Holi, he will get a woman wearing white to walk through a mass of people throwing colour and come out the other side still white. Kerkar is creating art documentaries in the guise of travel documentaries and each one centres around one of his art installations.

Kerkar’s works have already been shown in Dubai and he is preparing for a new installation there - he will assemble massive glass letters spelling out the word MALL and fill them with sand.

And he will soon be going to Portugal, deep in the roots of Goan life, to grow rice in the Garden of Necessities in Lisbon. The garden was where sailors used to go and pray before a voyage – he will sow seeds of rice mapping out the journey of Vasco de Gama to India, honouring the spice route, the taking of rice to Europe and the culinary exchange of potatoes, tomatoes, chilis and cashews that were unknown in India before this time.

Some of Kerkar’s work captures the imagination, making us rethink our political environment, the cultures that we are a part of, while others offer us passage into a different time and space, an insight into a mystical world – nature reframed through light and shadow to create magical realism.

Like aboriginal artists working in dreamtime, Kerkar’s installations make us relook at Nature and our connection to it.

Nature is Kerkar’s theme and medium, the beach his inspiration and canvas. He shows us the beauty of each wave, the simplicity of each shell and the strength of each man, but also by putting them together to make a greater shape – a wave, a boat, the moon, a new planet, he shows us how every wave is part of the ocean, how we are all a small part of the whole.