“The Dancing Coffee”, Drawings and Paintings by Koeli Mukherjee Ghose at the Truffles Café

- Vishal Tondon

Mixed media on canvas

“The Dancing Coffee”, an exhibition of drawings and paintings by the Hyderabad based artist Koeli Mukherjee Ghose is on at the Truffles Café, Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad from the 20^th of July till the 4^th of August. 

Speaking of the inspiration behind the series of drawings and paintings on view, Koeli muses, “This series is an outcome of a realization while I was at a café in Kolkata, staring away at my glass thoughtfully. The coffee of my life is effervescent and evolving and its sugar is my experiences and all that I have learnt.”

One look at Koeli’s oeuvre, and we know that the line is her tool; she has an admirable command over it and one can feel the creative energy that welled up when the artist’s body, the paint brush or the quill, and the paper became one. Her calligraphic strokes are meditative and frenzied all at once; one can feel the fierce concentration with which these strokes were made, evidently in such a way as to make the endlessly subtle structure and movement clearer. 

Koeli questions with her eyes and seeks out forms with the frenzy of her drawing and painting tools. Even on her canvases, she paints with such verve and such directness that every scribble reminds you of the act of drawing and of the pleasure of the act. She often draws benevolent female faces as part of the composition, but these faces show no servitude. The act of their drawing is, as the great champion of drawing John Berger would put it, “triumphant”. 

And what are the resources that Koeli draws upon for her art? The sprightly dancing line in her work evidently is an influence of her training at Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, where great masters such as Nandalal Bose and Ramkinkar Baij earlier honed the skill of synthesizing the Far Eastern calligraphic line with Indian aesthetics. Koeli has a refined and strong sense of aesthetics. Under the guidance of her hand, the calligraphic line goes secular in its rendering of female faces and traditional Indian motifs. 

The sensuousness of the arabesque in Koeli’s works creates synesthetic relations with the sensuous aroma afloat in the space that these drawings and paintings are displayed in; the Truffles Café at Jubilee Hills in Hyderabad. The show is a must watch for art enthusiasts and coffee enthusiasts alike; here is the ambiance for a perfect evening out with your loved ones, amidst coffee as fine as the art that it inspired.  

 Mixed media on canvas

 Ink on paper

 Ink on paper

 Mixed media on canvas

 Ink on paper

 Mixed media on canvas

 Ink on paper

 Ink on paper

          Mixed media on canvas

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Koeli Mukherjee Ghose is an art historian and curator. She has done her Bachelors in Fine Arts from Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, and is a Gold Medalist in Visual Arts from Rabindra Bharati University Kolkata. She is a General Council Member of the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi.

Koeli has had solo exhibitions in the Birla Academy of Arts and Culture, Kolkata, Lalit Kala Akademi, Delhi, Standard Chartered Bank, Bangalore, and Taj Krishna, Hyderabad, among others.

Her articles have been published in Bombay Art Society Magazine, Bliss of Being, ‘Calligraphic Works by P. Parameshwar Raju’ and she also contributes as a guest writer to the Art Column of Hyderabad Times, Times of India.