Dilip Ranade

Visual allegories
While contemplating to visualize an idea for painting, mind flutters like a butterfly all over seeking inspiration in experiences, various art forms like paintings, sculpture, and theatre, mythological stories, in the memory images or sometimes even in my previous works. At times, while doodling, something strikes as a potential schema and possibilities are explored to make it into a significant expression. A vague malleable picture appears in the mind which slowly takes shape and start forming in to an intriguing visual. The mental process of grasping the potential in the schema hints at multiple possibilities. Those are explored further and if found engaging, then the true journey starts .It is steered and taken further till satisfactory configuration has emerged. In spite of all these efforts, work might be a failure which has to be rejected and has to be started afresh.
To look at few of the exemplary works from this group and it’s possible interpretation might help to get insight into process of conceiving a painting.
The painting titled ‘The End of Evil’ could be interpreted as representation of the theme of destruction of the evil element in society, in which a dragon symbolizes the evil. In the black tent or shed, blur images of a horse rider (the saviour) and a dragon are seen engaged in fight. Further, we can imagine that eventually by killing the dragon the saviour relieves people from oppressive situation. This painting is partly inspired by the European paintings on the subject’ Saint George Killing the Dragon’. Whereas in another painting titled ‘No Exit’ a group of people are shown as if trapped, implying helplessness of the human beings.
The work ‘Birth of Pieta ‘refers partly to the concept of Pieta and also to the Michelangelo’s sculpture. It implies, as if the ‘Pieta’ is still in the process of emerging. In the painting titled ‘Nostalgia’ a toy of a dog on wheels is combined with a hand to evoke memories of childhood play of shadow, in the painting.