Painting, Faith, and Life

Drawing and painting is akin to a spring constantly bubbling within me and ever was since childhood.  Now it is contiues as both a joy and challenge – how to capture a feeling or memory, a play of light, rain or wind upon a land or sea; innocence on a child’s face, wisdom or kindness, the poise of an animal or bird; still or cascading water.  Sometimes, a sense of silence or vastness of a scene, the universe, …the topics are myriad. Most artists will probably agree, painting brings the joy and peace that creativity nurtures, albeit it is challenging  …  just as gardening can be!

Quite naturally, it is an ingredient in the compote of my life’s experiences, the everything that ‘I am’,  that now influence and drive my creativity; so, a little about that.

I was born to a Sikh family in the Punjab in India. My family has a long history with the British, whilst the wider family also encompasses denominations of Muslims, Christians and Hindus. My late Father, a naval officer, was stationed in Bombay from whence I have memories of two loves:  ‘painting’ (colouring a picture book of English proverbs, April showers …. bring May flowers) and ‘gardening’; (placing a wet-mud ball upon a sunny wall of the balcony of our apartment , and waiting for a flower to grow; then a daily ritual replacing the dry with another wet-mud. Of course, nothing ever grew; I wouldn’t know about seeds until I was 8 years old.) Then, for health reasons, my parents sent me to boarding school in the hills of southern India; I was five and a half years.

‘PCK’ was run by nuns; Irish, English, and Indian Catholics. Today as I write, from my studio in a very English Northamptonshire village, with a 1000-year-old Church on the banks of the River Nene, it may say something about life and the universe that, for five decades, my closest and dearest friends remained ‘my Nuns’. Many of those whom I have known and still treasure have, lately, been resident in nearby Leicester – one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the UK – and in Matlock in Derbyshire; and I continue to treasure my classmates.

I was 14 on the eve of leaving Bombay to resettle in the Punjab.  And, for the first time, my (late) Mother translated several Gurmukhi stanzas of the Japji Sahib (The Meditations) by Guru Nanakji. To my surprise and astonishment, I wept!  Thus, started my third life-long love and journey of ‘becoming a Sikh’ (a devotee).

Being immersed in my culture in the Punjab, I learned more about our ten Gurus who set out the framework for troubled times, linking worship directly to Vaheguruji (Wonderful God) – to learn to live peaceably with all.  I learned of constancy, the oneness of all things, maintaining equipoise and kindness in the face of sacrifices and sorrow, as Guru Nanak says: “Joy and sorrow are the robes we wear before Thee”. And the constant remembrance that everything is God – so, nothing can be ‘lost’. The Path is to be hammered out within, each day, through a lifetime’s varied experiences!

Marrying an Englishman with a truly international perspective of life …

Marrying an Englishman with a truly international perspective of life I began to absorb the subtleties of ‘British culture’ and to love the beauty of Northamptonshire and the unending beauty all over the United Kingdom. Together we worked and shared experiences in man-power planning for the defence industries and telecoms, IT, government – national and local – to production and the NHS.  And, with it, the resultant travel all over the UK, Europe and the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia – .

I treasure ‘a medal’, coined in gold, given to me by Saudi wives, meaningful not because of the precious metal but rather, because it was minted to commemorate the fact that ‘a woman‘ had been allowed to work on the military base and I was seen to be upholding women’s societal rights. (There, even the Commandant commented; “Well perhaps we could have some secretaries…!?”)

Being in the desert helped me to understand how the implacable beauty of the rub al Khali had influenced my husband’s understanding of “submission” in the context of Islam. My work there, and in the Himalayas before and later, influences my love of wide spaces – nature in the raw and people living in those environments.

On our return from India and deciding new directions, my husband Michael put a question to me: “If today was the last day of your life, what would you wish you had done but have not?”.  I answered: ”Finished my studies” and, two days later, we were at DMU where I undertook my MA in Design as a prelude to going on to my PhD at Loughborough.

Michael jokes that I now love ‘the 4 Ps’: Prayers, Painting, Planting .. and Puffing (aka yoga and exercise!).  And it wasn’t until the UK that my love of gardening really found expression…. set off by my husband’s sense of fun growing tomatoes in a rickety old greenhouse. Now gardening is a firm love and I have become transplanted into rural England!

In the context of theCafe’s mission regarding creativity and well-being, I am conscious of how much of a sense well-being I have gained working with my art group and also of working and learning periodically from art teachers since about 2008/9.  In both examples sharing the experiences of how creativity helps foster the sense of well-being, both in us as individuals and also in and across the two communities.