In the Eye of The Beholder

April 16, 2023

Art

What makes a piece of art beautiful? Few questions are simultaneously so easy and yet so difficult to answer. Whether an innovative new process or adherence to the legacies of the masters, true beauty in art is as common as it is impossible to pin down. Suchitra Bhosle and Karen Davis are two Artists featured in The Secret Garden Art Novel, with vastly differing ways of creating beauty.

Suchitra Bhosle is an impressionist artist who draws from 20th-century naturalism. If these words mean little to you, let’s add some context. Impressionism and Naturalism emerged in the 1800s. Naturalism attempted to paint the world as it truly was, rather than the heavily stylized landscapes popular at the time. Similarly, Impressionism strived to paint the world as it appeared but believed this could only be done through complete and total spontaneity–hence the short, rapid brush strokes of artists like John Singer Sargent.

We see these influences play out in Suchitra’s work, yet she does not hold back from inserting modern sensibilities. In The Secret Garden collection, she paints the diversity experienced by the modern child, Mary as African American, Colin as Caucasian, and Dickon as Indian. By using techniques of old to capture contemporary values, Suchitra’s work exhibits both historic legacy and a refreshing vitality.

Karen Davis finds beauty in the mystery and intricacies of the natural world. Rather than trying to capture it in paint, she turns to a much more elaborate and planned process of sculpting tole botanicals, designed from the plants in her garden. Tole is enameled or lacquered metalware, often with gilt decoration that was especially popular in the 18th century for adorning trays and lamps. Karen uses copper washes and enamel paints to create her intricate, hand-crafted sculptures before mounting them to various baseboards. Her ability to use a hard, inflexible material such as metal to create something as organic and delicate as flowers speaks to her skill.

We sat down with Karen and Suchitra, who spoke about their practice, beauty in art, and what The Secret Garden means to them.

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Like the Impressionist masters before her, Suchitra is not one to premeditate her creative practice. “Having a method means you work from memory and that doesn’t serve my personality very well because I am extremely spontaneous,” she says. “For me, it’s all about that spontaneous connection between the visual and my impulse. There are no mental thoughts to access, it’s being completely available to the impulses of the visual beauty, being willing to put it down without any fillers in between.”

We should not make the mistake of equating spontaneity with ease; to rid the mind of any intrusive thoughts, and to overcome the desire to tweak and adjust work, is a challenge as old as time. The fact that Suchitra’s work is as stunning as it is, created in the heat of the moment, speaks to years of practice spent carefully cultivating her skill.

Karen’s craft, while visually very different and more logistically complex, requires just as much clarity and focus. “To make my flowers, I use copper sheeting that I cut and shape. The petals are different layers that are stacked on top of each other and held together with wire or epoxy. I can soften it sometimes to create different shapes, but I have to wait a few hours and know exactly when to do it because if I wait too long it hardens. I’ve learned this medium that is not artistic, but I’m using it for an artistic purpose,” Karen says.

To create her flowers, Karen pulled from a wide variety of sources. “A lot of my flowers come from my own garden. I cut them apart to get the shape I need. As far as understanding flowers, I actually went to wedding cake-baking books. It’s a little bit different because when you’re working with sugar flowers, it expands, which is very different from copper, but I was able to translate it,” she explains.

In the same way Karen sources her home-grown plants to inform her designs, Suchitra focuses on people to inspire her portraits. “I’ve always been drawn to faces, people, and emotions,” she says. “Something about people’s expressions and the feeling it evokes. It could be a woman seated somewhere, it could be in a magazine, it could be a gesture. I look for the things people do that are artistic, that have an elegance, a natural form and rhythm. I look for these rhythms a lot in life. If someone is really artistically inclined in the way they speak or dress, what they’re saying in the context of the conversation, that is where I find expression and emotion.”

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This attention to human expression is clearly visible in Suchitra’s art. Her portrait, Dickon and His Friend depicts The Secret Garden’s iconic character as a young Indian boy. He stands outdoors, one arm resting on a shovel, the other on his hip. The novel’s plucky Robin sits on his shoulder. Dickon’s expression is confident, yet inquisitive. Self-assured and kind, his body language is open and inviting.

Suchitra speaks to her decision to paint Dickon, who in the novel is from the English countryside, as Indian. “It was another way of saying that we all connect at the end of the day; color, caste, creed, and cultural differences, it’s all the same at the end of the day. We have different backgrounds that we come from and what we experience and are exposed to that makes us unique. But in our hearts, we all want happiness and good things to unfold around us and within us. For me, that was the overarching message of [The Secret Garden].”

For Karen, the novel’s central themes of healing and growth were especially resonant. In the novel, Archibald Craven falls into a deep depression after the death of his wife. For a decade, he neglects his son Colin, and withdraws from the world, consumed by his pain. It is Colin, Mary, and Dickon who ultimately revive and awaken him. “A lot of what I pulled from The Secret Garden was about healing,” Karen says. “What Colin’s father went through with his depression and pulling out of it. I had depression after my second child was born so I felt very sympathetic to that character. Death is necessary to have life. You see that with plants and flowers. You need a harsh winter in order to have bulbs grow. Yes, there is struggle but there is going to be beauty out of that.”

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This philosophy is visible in two of Karen’s pieces that serve as companions for one another. Spring’s Promise and Summer’s Sweetness feature flowers at two different stages of growth against a nearly identical backdrop. The first show daffodils still partially enclosed, small, and withholding.

In Summer’s Sweetness, however, they have erupted into a vibrant display of white petals and gold leaves. No matter the medium, all art balances instinct and choice, legacy and originality. Whether your practice emerges from spontaneous connection or is a process of detailed craftsmanship, if it follows in the footsteps of masters or is assembled from surprising sources, it possesses a beauty uniquely its own.

We are endlessly grateful Suchitra and Karen chose to share theirs with us.

To see more of Karen Davis’ and Suchitra Bhosle’s Art visit the Bond & Grace website and to hear our conversation in full, listen to Art Talk on Spotify.