BIRD AND MOUNTAIN SERIES
125 by 174 cm.; 49 ¼ by 68 ½ in.
Oil on canvas Swaminathan painted his bird, tree and mountain series in the 1970s and this unusually large painting is unquestionably one of the finest canvases that he did at the time. Swaminathan’s yellows speak of golden birth, his reds of passionate packed energy. The work pulsates with the vibrancy of colour giving birth to an image in a sea of geometry. Swaminathan’s attitude to an image is reverential. “An image has more meaning than you can ever pour into it†His specific images were born of his environment – the bird, the rock, the tree. With bare economy of variations his images tell a story – the bird at most still is ready to fly take off into the world, the tree roots upwards, steps forward or looks at itself receding, doubled in symmetry. Or it stands by itself taking over the whole sky dispensing with all fellow images except the flying bird. Swaminathan’s images shift, setting up links, tensions, relationships, currents, changing focus, and attitudes. With each shift, however slight, the story moves, an episode is born. The immobility of the rocks and hills, perhaps signifies the limitations of a human being who is bound to earth – subjected to his fate by laws of nature. And the bird becomes the symbol of the mind that can roam free, in time and space, and soar to new heights. Both the bird and the flying rock in his paintings portray perhaps man’s urge and aspirations to free himself from the shackles of limitations. For the casual viewer, Swaminathan’s paintings are mere rocks and birds, but they are in essence the product of the artist’s imagination, poetry and mysticism. In the sixties Swami left journalism and took up art and aesthetics as a whole time endeavour. Swami in his autobionote explained his artistic swing and said: