For the beauty of the earth

‘So close am I to nature that when the bud opened and made that?chatak?sound, I bent my head low and asked, “Was it me that you were speaking to?’’’ Josh Mahilabadi

Nature and Indian sacred literature. Artist extraordinaire, Olivia Fraser creates work that celebrates the beauty of the earth as she creates work that has an ecological as well as spiritual echo. One of my favourite series from her evolution is Darshan. It extols the beauty of the human gaze, of the word darshan as well as humble bees.

The art of paying attention to the minute as well as to the immense is key to Fraser’s art. A practitioner of yoga and a trained Bharatanatyam dancer, meditation and visualisation are central to her practice in art. The coexistence of the aesthetic creates a special harmony in her style, of figuration and abstraction. Her journey entered the realm of the mystical when she studied the?pichwais?of Nathdwara and miniature art of Mewar and Jaipur. Over the years, the study of natural settings morphed into a focus on lotuses, which, shed their petals and drew in swarms of bees, all arranged into delicate patterns along an ambient axis of spirituality.

Her many compositions featuring eyes—either in pairs or in clusters— for instance, plays on the deeper meaning of the Hindu concept of beholding a holy person or deity. In Darshan, a set of large eyes look at the viewer, a tilak hovering above and between them. Two bees remain lodged within the irises. The object of adoration and worship is internalised, the beholder and the beheld become one, instead of the latter being passively observed by the former. The act of looking at her paintings also demands an awakening of the viewer’s inward gaze. Fraser says the image mustn’t dwell on the eye alone but must seep through them into the recesses of the mind, stirring a welter of emotions. She quotes the?Gheranda Samhita?which urges the yogi: ‘On hearing the sound of a bee from within, lead the mind there.’

When we love nature the world of the sensory fills us. But to perceive the beauty of these inflections, the senses have to be awakened to a heightened reality.