Words can be limiting, and definitions, restrictive. Take the word 'prolific', for instance. It confines itself to creative output with no indication of its origins in the pure creative thought that takes root in an artist, preceding both the medium and the material.
Searching for a singular thread that runs through artist and sculptor K. Laxma Goud's oeuvre is also a futile pursuit. The word 'oeuvre' itself seems frivolously elitist to attribute to the vast body of art work including paintings, prints, drawings, murals, and sculpture by this 77-year-old artist on whom the Government of India bestowed the prestigious Padma Shri in 2016.
The closest, perhaps, that one could come to describing K. Laxma Goud's work is that it is embodied by an unabashed rusticity that is at once frank in its composition, while being subtle in its metaphors.
On November 16, 2017, a select compilation of K. Laxma Goud's paintings, prints, drawings, and sculptures opens in Chennai. On the eve of the exhibition, we spoke with the artist who responded to our sets of paired-word concepts with aplomb, distilling 60 years of creative pursuit in concise replies while reaching back across the decades to his brief but momentous time of tutelage under the renowned artist Prof. K. G. Subramanyan in Baroda. When one is in the midst of someone with the insight, clarity and focus of K. Laxma Goud, one learns to simply listen with rapt attention.
RURAL ORIGINS AND THE URBAN GAZE
"I was a rural-born individual and for the sake of my education I came to the city. Just like for the sake of my exhibition, I will visit Chennai. These are inevitable situations in life. The other aspect is that when you travel from one point to another, or it is a transition from one age to another, like youth, middle age and old age — I have reached my third stage — in the process of this passage, I have definitely carried my emotional attachments to my origin.
"My people are typically fashioned. You can identify that these people are coming from a village and a particular region. I cannot forget those faces, both women and men, their domestic animals and the rest of the environment — the flora and fauna — around life. Such an engagement is dear to me.
"For want of identity, we all try and develop a language. Language belongs to us, and to me. Whether it is acceptable in so-called sophisticated society or not, is immaterial for an artist. So I think what I have carried in my bag has come through and that has become my expression.
MONOCHROME OR COLOUR
"I was fascinated with the idea of drawing, singular line drawing. And that is something which even convinced my teacher, Prof. K.G. Subrahmanyan. Or it suggested that since I am fond of drawing things, probably that can be his (my) tool. There was a system in the art schools that every week or every month you are expected to show your work to the teacher and he will ask you certain questions. For instance, he may ask you to sort your art works into the ones which you like and the ones you don't.
When I sorted out my works, the ones which I didn't like were my colour works. So my teacher simply asked me a question, "What makes you to think that this is art and that is not art?" I said, "Sir, most people work in colour, so they call it as painting. That is art." He said, "If other people are comfortable in working in those techniques, let them do it. And the tool which you are comfortable with, like you draw and in black and white - you want to pursue without any further confusion, because it is straight and simple." He said, that in black and white, between that black and white distance, there are nuances of grey also. And it's true. If you use the combination of these greys, the stark naked black and white, you will create music, a harmony.
"Art is not necessarily by colour, art is by anything which an artist does. So if you can construct these ideas with a singular focus, wonderful things can come out. That created a lot of confidence in me. It is not that you need to work from the comfort zone all the time, but you begin with it and because your lifespan is so big, your future is big, you can work consistently for a period of time. You may probably arrive at colour or you may convince people that in black, there is colour already. Or that in white, there is colour already. It is a question of how you present yourself to the people, it's not about peoples' expectations of you.
"You are an artist, you are an individual, so you have to develop a kind of language, a kind of attitude, a kind of aesthetic sensibility which people will look at and will be enthralled by, because you've spent time in understanding this issue.
TWO DIMENSIONS AND THREE DIMENSIONS
"I have not concerned myself to one thing. I draw, I use watercolour, and these days I work on large canvases, (which are of course not going to be there at the Chennai exhibition, they are commissioned works). I was designing textiles some years ago. I am trained in designing murals. I also work in craft.
"People think — this is craft, that is art. I've learnt from my own experience of working with intellectual teachers like Prof. Subramanyan who doesn't draw a hard line between craft and art. On the contrary, he says, "What is wrong in being an artisan?" We need to respect our own craft, our own textiles, our goldsmith, our blacksmith, our carpentry, our carvings and our bronze castings, especially from the South. Look at the Chola bronzes, for example. Why are we not learning from the artisan?
"Why do we paint canvases? For the purpose of commercial considerations? Art is not that. You have to indulge in it and find out.You have seen some of my wooden assembly — I am like a child — if I find something somewhere in a workshop or in somebody's studio, I collect the pieces, and I put them together. It is my lifetime preoccupation.
THE MEDIUM OR THE MESSAGE – WHICH COMES FIRST?
"I think it's me! I see it. You throw things but I see art in it. For example, you throw away a rag and I can make art out of that. So it's my mind, it's my sensibility. Etching is an age old technique. Many people have done it. But my etchings are my own. If graphic sensibilities are there in me and if it can be a great vehicle to carry on, then I will use it. Not because it is just there.You also see clay, but when I touch the clay, it's different. I'm not saying I'm the only one who transforms clay. I'm not saying that the medium does not influence the art work. It does. But the eventual command is in the way you get it, the way you treat it, and how you engage your skill.
"My teacher always said, "Work from within. Don't search for material. The material that you touch — that should become art." It is like a found object. You are the master who employs the knowledge that you have. You have to make use of it.
ON STRIKING THE BALANCE BETWEEN INSIDER AND OUTSIDER
"As an individual, you are in the thick of the environment. You are in the thick of your household. But to observe yourself you probably need to walk away, in the sense that you need to put some distance between being there and not being there. When you look at yourself in the mirror—you are both an outsider and being an insider.
I demand from my admirers who come to my studio, "It is not that you acquire the work. It is not that you hang my work in your house. This is no way to appreciate or admire an artist. Until and unless you cross that border and become an insider to the activity of an artist, it is very difficult for you to appreciate what an artist is does. It is a take-off point."
An Inner Retrospective — An exhibition of Paintings, Prints, Drawings and Sculptures by Padma Shri K. Laxma Goud is presented by Gallery Sumukha, Bengaluru at Lalit Kala Academy from November 16-21, 2017. Address: 4, Greams Road, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600006. Tel: 044 2829 1692. Timings: 12 noon to 8 pm.
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