Nibedita voyaged within and without. In the third and final part of her narrative, she talks of deep pain, the intersections of her personal voyages within and on the seas, outside. She journeyed from the world of worrisome questions into a zone of comforting exclamations. We are republishing her story in Different Truths. It appeared in The Punch, on July 1, 2015.
I found recompense in nature and love replenished me unconditionally.
Love is a mixed media work and expresses a mood using the Indian archetypical colours associated with the concept of love.
A Dungeon of Unending Darkness
The year was 2007. And as providence would have it, once again I was hurled back into a dungeon of unending darkness and this time the pain was excruciating. The sudden loss of my dearest brother, my mentor, made me totally vulnerable to everything that reminded him.
For the next four years, I lost all contact with canvases and paint. Wrote occasionally … it was easy to scribble a sentence or two or doodle a few fragmentary words. Faces formed and vanished everywhere, in mid-ocean, in clouds, in sleep and in wakefulness. They walked me through memories, which became involuntary impulses.
And on one such night, as darkness enfolded me completely within its sheltering black, I became distinctly aware of the light…
On most nights, I stood all by myself on the top deck looking into darkness. And on one such night, as darkness enfolded me completely within its sheltering black, I became distinctly aware of the light each twinkling star showered on me. It seemed to pierce me through and through.
The exhilaration followed, as I voyaged again and again, inside, and outside from troubled zones into a realm of calm. Many such voyages happened. And I steadily moved on from the world of worrisome questions into a zone of comforting exclamations, from witnessing temporal life to perceiving infinite eternity.
Forms Made Way for the Formless
In my paintings, forms made way for the formless and the figurative metamorphosed into the abstract! The genesis of a new series of paintings and installations happened within a span of three weeks. Sailing through this endless sea for ten years and more culminated into The Sea-Insideseries. All of which was done onboard an oil-tanker.
Later, the series was showcased in Renaissance Art Gallery, Lalit Kala Academy, India International Centre. In 2013, it travelled as a solo exhibition to London, UK, National Art Museum: Palais De Glace, Buenos Aires, Fundacion CEP, Belgrano, Pasos Perdidos, the Heritage Salon, Congreso: Parliament Buenos Aires.
Sea Inside Artist: Nibedita Sen 
Sea Inside Artist: Nibedita Sen
Sea Inside 9 and 10 are both done in acrylic on board. I did them, while I was on board.
… I watched a single ray of light burst through thick black clouds to form a neat spotlight on the dark sea-surface.
Once at midday, I watched a single ray of light burst through thick black clouds to form a neat spotlight on the dark sea-surface. This was magic for me! From the Mediterranean to the Black Sea, from the Pacific to the Atlantic many such spontaneous magic held me mesmerised and mystified all the time. After six years of gap, I started painting once again, occasionally exhibiting my work, when I was not sailing.
Painting Sea Inside 22
My painting, Sea Inside 22,done in oil, is a tribute to the midday magic I was witness to in the Pacific Ocean and another time in the Japanese Sea. Light reassures life!
My Seafaring Decade
As I rewind my seafaring decade and as I see the whole range of my sea-paintings now, I clearly observe a parallel psychic journey through the wilderness of life into an open space of joy and hope.
As I journeyed within through rough times after the great personal losses, I also literally voyaged outside through phases of disturbed blues into those that are
more soothing. Stormy nights through the Great Australian Bighteventually brought us to the soothing Mediterranean.
Nature continuously replenished me with a new vision and light.
Techniques I had none. All I had was my instinct. Nature continuously replenished me with a new vision and light. Believing in magic and combining it with routine existence leads me on….
My understanding that all matter exists “within itself and beyond itself” was a revelation and my installation justifies this.
The Installation Idea
My first flight ever was from Calcutta to New Delhi. What instantly fascinated me was the slowly dissolving landscape, which became more and more distant, more and more abstract …more and more equivocal.
The huge buildings turning into structures lesser than matchboxes; human beings looking like ants creeping around; the Ganges turning into a strip of gray blue ribbon and slowly dissolving into nowhere. This first impression of the heights remained with me forever.
When I flew from Bangalore to Sri Lanka, I was mesmerised by the variegated blue strips forming abstract patterns on beds of yellow and white sands…
When I flew from Bangalore to Sri Lanka, I was mesmerised by the variegated blue strips forming abstract patterns on beds of yellow and white sands with foam and corals adding the lacy skirting around waterbeds that looked breathtakingly beautiful yet ambivalent! This Aerial-view of the land-water-masses from different heights made me look for deeper meanings into perspectives of sight. Bosphorus was stunning from the top! So was the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, and the coasts of Australia.
Aerial View of a Waterbed
Done with blue agate stones, seaweeds, and fiberglass this installation is an extendable collage. It is in two parts: The Ephemeral; Matter and Beyond.
I focussed on minimalism and beauty. Since I was dealing with an extremely beautiful natural perspective and since it is difficult to better something that is so perfect, therefore, I kept it simple.
Apart from demonstrating natural splendour this work demonstrates the concept of microcosm within the macrocosm.
Apart from demonstrating natural splendour this work demonstrates the concept of microcosm within the macrocosm. All matter is ephemeral yet eternal and the perimeter that we attribute to matter is an illusion … it exists, in itself, and beyond…
This installation was showcased in a solo exhibition, in 2014, at India International Centre, New Delhi.
Long Years of Self-reconstruction
It did take time to recover the lost things. And as I said earlier, it was possible only through a magic, called regeneration and that happened internally, after long years of self-reconstruction.
Yes, self-reconstruction did happen as and when I learnt to think beyond matter. I know and I believe that whatever was mine and whatever I lost exists within me and beyond me. I touch them, see them, hear them, smell them, and taste them whenever I want to. It is easier now.
Republished with permission of The Punch. My Journey: Seeing Inside (thepunchmagazine.com)
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Paintings by the author
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Very poignant. Inspirational. A perfect text for any scholar studying journey as a motif in literary and visual arts. A confluence of the visual and literary aesthetics.