Drawn to Life

Every culture in the world, across continents and time-frames, has a rich store of traditional art which is drawing-based.

The ‘power of the line’ to enclose or open up space, create or suggest form, is almost infi nite. And the artist uses drawing in an infi nite number of ways. Some might draw as practice, to strengthen or develop technique, to keep private visual notes, as experimental and exploratory exercises; others make a drawing as a fi nished work in its own right. Rini Dhumal does all of the above. One only has to look through her sketchbooks to see this.

Piles of sketchbooks yield a forest of pages covered with drawings that cross years and continents—bold, stark, or delicate and nuanced; washed softly in colour, textured, or simple black and white; dreamlike, fantastical, or keenly observed in documentary detail. As one leafs through them, whole worlds emerge. There is history here, and geography, nature and culture. Ornamental or religious motifs, mythical fi gures, half-animal–half-human, monuments and places of worship, human life in all its chaos, swirl and spill from these decades of drawings—a fl ood of memories undammed.
Drawing upon a storehouse of historical details, the splendours of her childhood, and anecdotal references from various travels, Rini Dhumal creates a vivid aesthetic in her art-making.