Someone said of her work...
"An artist fully dedicated to the eternal and timeless beauty of flowers that help transcend time and connect the eternal with the real in one fluid stroke of the brush."
It has been a little over three years since the tryst with paint and brush started in Manju’s life. This was the end of a three decade long career in Banking and the beginning of a new journey with paint and brush. She finally decided to feed her soul and pander to the heart. She is now a watercolor artist and paints watercolor flowers.
“It is only a chosen few that get an opportunity to rediscover themselves in the fifth decade of their lives. I am reborn. A banker of thirty plus years has now emerged as a watercolor flower painter.
I dream flowers, I grow flowers, I photograph flowers, and I paint flowers”….says Manju.
Flowers thrill ones soul and stir the senses. They are the epitome of human emotion and expression. Humans have used flowers from time immemorial to express their deepest emotions - love, celebration, joy, success, empathy and even sadness. We pray with flowers. We place them before God as a symbol of our total devotion. We give them to our dearest as a symbol of our loving and caring.
It is said’ Flowers are the footprints of God on earth’
And there is no better medium to capture this ethereal quality of flowers than watercolors. Like the flowers, watercolors are vibrant and spunky. The colors have a spontaneous fluidity and charm that defies control. The indefinable quality is like nature itself….free, abundant, bright and untamed.
Watercolor and flowers combine most effectively to chart their own course and form. Watercolors allow us to explore a new sense of spontaneity and freedom of expression. The colors are all consuming and create such an aura of beauty and happiness that all else in the world is lost and made not significant.
Manju’s art represents this beautiful face of nature. Because she is clear that art is beautiful, art is simple and it is this simplicity that makes it eternal. Art must relate to the heart and speak in a language that uplifts the human spirit. The artist has the ability and freedom to transcend the realm of reality and create one of her own. A world beyond the normal and the given. It is like a journey into infinity.
She now inhabits this new world.
For me painting flowers in watercolors is a spiritual experience.
It is meditative, it is Zen, it is Prayer.
The time is now ripe to let go and surrender oneself to this wondrous experience. To give excessive thought a go by and let the senses rule. Senses that lead to a world of experiencing color, texture, form and fluidity.
I paint because I must
I soak myself in watercolors.
I immerse myself in flowers
I paint watercolor flowers.
And you are invited to share my world.
