I GROW MORE AND MORE - REBA HORE
November 11 - December 24 , 2021
It is very difficult to write about my mothers' work because I am not detached from her. I stay within her. The memory of her as a young mother, a middle-aged mother and finally an old mother float in front of my eyes as I remember her.
She came from a family of Jessore, her father was the chief justice of the Supreme Court. She met my father, Somnath Hore, during her years at the Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata. Both of them had experienced the devastations brought about by the Bengal famine, the riots and the Communist Party movement. Enduring these events only made their bond grow stronger which could be seen clearly when they worked together. She lived and worked in Kolkata, Delhi and in Santiniketan until her last days.
She was an introverted painter. Working on big canvases, she used themes that were expressionist and emotional. Through her works she essayed the happy surroundings and the mundanely existential scenes around her.
My parents moved to Santiniketan in 1967 when Kala Bhavan was open to all working artists. She interacted closely with the students, which opened up her canvases and allowed her works to broaden. She wielded a surrealistic essence of separation and grief in her oil paintings. She exuded a physical and feminine existence that was very empathetic and full of physical gratification. This chronicled her nature of reaching out to people through her paintings.
During the mid-1970s, early 1980s, she developed an allergy while using oil, thus she turned to the medium of encaustic paintings. The long hours of mixing pigment with wax was a very ameliorative experience for her, especially during all the recesses when she and my father solved domestic problems. She always consoled him through his difficult days in life. All of this did not take away from her work but, in fact, made her work complete. Her hands were full running a household with a small school going child, dealing with the tantrums of a busy and difficult husband and balancing that with 8 hours of painting and interactions with friends. She continued to create and weave into her art all of these daily oddities.
The last phase of her life was full of brokenness after my father's demise. The bond she shared with him became a tether to her art. The grief of losing her husband was weaved into her body of works. Her weakening eyesight and solitude led her to compose smaller, more poetic oils, black and white drawings and writings about her own life.
My mother captured the freedom and liquid love of motherhood, a phrase of love that I still carry within, through bright oranges, reds, yellows and blues, made warm with sunlight. My mother persevered to stay in shape, she used to work regularly every morning, and tottered around the house until that fateful day in March 2008; a bright spring day that broke my nest. She worked till the end of her life, a life that was slowly ebbing away leaving behind her artworks, her legacy.
-Chandana Hore
Images
Installation
Press
Mid Day, November 07, 2021
