About
Matrix I call the coalescence of margins in the art of Shampa Sircar Das that gives origin to an array of components arranged in squares or rows and columns in or on which crystal fine forms appear – minutely transcribed from Buddhist Tantrik icons.
Shampa Sircar Das is an emotional artist with immanent sense for the spiritual world. Her style gives away her gender as rather a female than a man may touch on borderline blending in a womb like matrix. The technique by application of traditional sacred art of Tibet in modern style painting is not new; it may have started with Nicholas Roerich. Yet, Shampa Sircar Das, although seemingly not going into of the deep symbolism of Tibetan iconography, proves to have an apt gift for revealing the fragrance, the taste of spiritual experience gained in contemplation, well reflected in the luminosity of the androgynous faces and the crystal clear preciseness of visionary appearances. Her sense of choosing the colours, the compositional arrays and the repetitive matrix pattern which reminds also small pixel resolutions interwoven with the picture world of an ancient culture of wisdom is remarkable. It is inspirational and appealing aesthetically with the intent to bring a fraction inner balance and peace to the on-looker.
Journeys to the North Western borderlands of Ladakh and Spiti – so the artist says – have infused luminescent visions of Inner Being here brought in mix media on acrylic exquisitely on canvas. Paradoxically the artist forbears in her paintings the ocean like azure depth of the high altitude sky for the twilight of transmundane forms of enlightenment discovered on murals in the somber Himalayan temple halls – dreamlike, mirages, sensed through gazes turned inwards, enclosed by or originated from a matrix womb in different hues.
Hermaphrodite faces appear transpiring tranquility, hands speaking in the language of Mudras, sacred seed syllables emerging like parts for translation from one code to another, here a trident, there a skull cup, among wheels of joy, lotus petals and jewels as divine ornamentation. They blend the borderline of mundane (laukika) and transmundane (lokottara) in tangible abstraction.
The same theme underplays an untitled painting (mix media on canvas, 39 x 72 inch, 2010), where the face is blue and turned towards the crisp dawn of the north with closed eyes. There in the matrix squares of the plenum just the Tibetan letter AH and appears, at some places hacked into parts – AH being the seed syllables for vak (speech, energy). Aside, above and atop the anonymous head Buddhas appear - like wishful thinking emerges the upper part of a Buddha from the head, as a crowned Bodhisattva, just half visible, in the gesture of teaching above on the left; and the transparent figure of a Buddha on top holding the alms bowl of a Sramana. This painting plays more on the transmundane side of the borderline with a melting matrix.
To put into paint or in canvas sublime levels of state leading to spiritual attainment is a task seldom ventured, though Shampa Sircar Das does by depicting a frontal androgynous head with closed eyes fractured into pixels or matrices as an emerald crown in which appears like a ruby a Buddha with the gesture of teaching (mix media on canvas 48 x 60 inch, 2010). A pair of hands in the attempt to hold something invisible expresses the margin of recognition where there is just void.
The same pattern is taken up in ‘Untitled’ (mix media on canvas 44 x 72 inch, 2010). Here the artist integrates the four- armed and three-eyed black Bhairava, the wisdom protector of the underworld, holding a skull cup and a gada, as major focus of the painting. The blue face of the ever-present contemplator is turned towards a bowl held at the height of the heart with unseeing eyes. Above emerge out of this head two small two-armed Bhairava emanations or messengers of Bhairavas entourage, reminders of sacred samaya? The spectator’s gaze is attracted towards the bright blueness of the forehead, the bowl in the centre entwined with petal like fingers and the three skull cups in the hands of the wisdom protectors.
Another untitled painting (mix media on canvas, 36 x 36 inch, 2010) depicts a meditating face with eyes closed and illuminated from inside. Like the long shaped red hat of Padmasambhava worn by the Tibetan protagonists of the ‘old’ (rnying ma) and orally transmitted (bka’ rgyud) Schools a sphere within the sphere appears around the head on red ground in which icons of various Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in different hues appear; copies of murals of Alchi?
And again on this ‘Dhyana series’ painting (mix media on canvas, 30 x 50 inch, 2010) appear in the matrix of two opposed faces –eyes firmly closed - the upper part of a Buddha and the figures of a red Yamini and a white Simhavaktra, female deities or wisdom protectors representing the dark side of the liberating energy of a Dakini, apparently also copies of temple murals, vivid, alive, more real than the face, which mind seems lost in the visions.
Rather differently presented is ‘Untitled’ (Mix media on canvas, 44 x 72 inch, 2011) undersigned with a quote from the Yogi saint Milarepa (11th Century), depicting the pixel shape of a four legged animal with the head of a beautifully drawn face of a roaring lion, eventually again copied from a temple. The lion with the turquoise mane is a popular theme in temples, a symbol of fearlessness and invincible braveness, whether as vahana or as the support of Sakyamuni’s throne. It is also the freedom symbol of Tibet. The yellow sky and the mountain shapes below similar to nomads tents seem to reflect the outcry still of some hope directed towards a glowing sun.
Andrea Loseries
Santiniketan, December 2011
