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ANJOLIE'S CANVAS: Artist speaks about her work and how she came to be an ideal homemaker.

          

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Anjolie Ela Menon is one of India’s most respected artists. Her icon-like paintings have a wide following and her prolific art spans frescoes, glass, trunks, window frames and chairs.

The artist started life as Anjolie Ela Dey. She lost her mother early and was brought up in a privileged Bramho-Brahmin family. Anjolie’s father expected her to follow in his footsteps and become a doctor but the muse found her early.

She married her schoolmate Raja Menon, a Naval officer, after she returned from her art school in Paris. Proud of her roles as housewife, mother and grandmother, Anjolie speaks to CNN-IBN’s Anuradha SenGupta about her art and the responsibility of an artist.

Anuradha SenGupta: Exactly eight years ago, when you turned 60, you said, “I have but a decade or so left to work.” Is that because you were not sure about the ageing process and therefore what you could do or is it that you consciously decided that around 70 you want to retire?

Anjolie Ela Menon: I was trying to be realistic. A lot of people think that painting is rather a sissy-ish sort of a pastime, which requires you to sit and play with paint but you have to be very vigorous, especially if you are doing large works. You’ve got to be able to get on scaffoldings. My feet started getting wobbly about 30 years ago. I realised that the body will age even if the mind is charging ahead. Having said that, I hope I have 10 more years now.

Anuradha SenGupta: There is a sense that great hurt, loss, suffering or even physical struggle create great works of art, no matter what the medium is. So clearly this is a romanticised notion then?

Anjolie Ela Menon: It is partly a romanticized notion but if you have profundity or depth in what you’re doing, I think you have to go to sources that are just not superficial. I’ve always joked to say that I’m Bengali and Bengalis tend to be melancholic. If you look at Rabindra Sangeet, it is quite melancholic though celebratory in many ways. A lot of people talk about painters’ struggle. And I’ve been through that. The years in France were very difficult. We were on a very short scholarship, which barely covered our necessaries, and then I was married to a Naval officer. We started out with €400 a month.

Anuradha SenGupta: You returned to India and you went to Lovedale, your old school, to teach and that’s when you got engaged and married to your husband?

Anjolie Ela Menon: Yes, we were very young when we married.