BLUE MOUNTAIN GALLERY

You are invited to the opening reception on August 4th, 5-8 pm for the exhibition by Alakananda Mukerji, Flows the Dawn, which includes paintings, prints and tapestries.  It will be inaugurated by the First Lady of the Indian Consulate, Professor Abha Jaiswal. Please join us at 5:00 PM to celebrate the viewing of the new work and to toast the future.

 

ARTIST STATEMENT:
As it did for many, COVID descended on my soul like a long, dark night.  There was so much unknown; so much fear, anxiety, and confusion.  Then there was the unending solitude: the desolate disconnection — from my students and colleagues, from my friends and family, and from life itself, or, at least, so it seemed.  Everywhere, there was the inescapable sense of loss — societal loss, cultural loss, and personal loss: a pall that hung over everything and everyone and which, at times, no light of hope seemed able to penetrate.

But then, after the long, dark night, a new day finally came. 

If you have sat in the still and silence of the very early morning, you know that daybreak is not really a breaking at all.  Breaking implies a suddenness, as if the new day arrives all at once.  It does not.  It is slower and subtler, like a gentle incoming tide.  So flows the dawn.  At first, out of the darkness, there are hints of barely perceptible greys — different tones; different shades.  Then come the colors, layer upon layer, bringing meaning and texture to the world: dim and unsure at first — almost not there — but moment by moment, becoming more vibrant, more real, more alive.

So was the emergence from COVID.  

“Flows the Dawn” captures this slow and steady resurrection, and my personal struggles as I emerged from a night that took so long to pass.  It is expressionistic; it is darkness and light; it is touch-and-go.  My work speaks with all the vocabulary of morning.  It tells of change, of reinvolvement, of new conversations. It is an invitation to interaction.  After all the apartness, interaction can no longer be denied.

Even in content and media, the scope of my work for “Flows the Dawn” is tremulous and unsettled, featuring tapestry, printmaking, and paintings made with blended acrylics and watercolors and oils — choosing only one form of paint seemed presumptuous and inappropriate for the mood of the moment.  The work presents itself as fluid, at times hinting at directness, but in reality, awash in auroral subtlety and moving lightly from form to form and emotion to emotion. 

Like the diverse techniques and processes I used to create the pieces, there are many layers and interweavings in each: the traditional and cultural with the unorthodox and the unexpected; the global and societal with the private and intimate; the obvious and straightfoward with the hidden and mysterious — in other words, the textures of who and where I was and who and where I am now — tinged, of course, with the anticipation of who and where I will be.

Conceived in despair, but ultimately born in hope, this new show, pulled together from what was available to me, both emotionally and materially, represents the changes which I — which all of us — have undergone during the long, dark night, and the perseverance which has brought us all to the here-and-now, ready to stand with the light of a new day in our eyes.