RESTLESS CREATIVITY | A RETROSPECTIVE | THE ART OF SUNIL DAS

(i) Untitled, Ink on Thick Paper Collage Based Drawings, Mixed Media on Board,
16 x 12.5 inches, 1993 14 x 9 inches, 1993

(ii) Untitled, Ink on Thick Paper
16 x 12 inches, 1993

(iii) Untitled, Ink on Thick Paper, 13 x 9.75 inches
(iv) Untitled, Ink on Paper, 12 x 9.5 inches, 2005

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A Poet Sitting Near A Café Window

…doesn't often think about and blows them on the face
how seaweed garlands the ocean floor of a new-born
or how stars dance on the walls releasing him from the curse of verse
when a child's shoe-buckle is illuminated peeping in the brown whirlpool of his tea-cup
with the slanting sun of 4 pm.
counting dragons at the bottom of pale-white china
He dips his nib in the fields swallowed in moonshine heavy with the fragile burden of Bulgarian roses
catches the dark prayers that collect tea-scents, dew before they mould
the earth's axis, and the heart of a poem.

50 Restless Creativity Aaamar Kabi, Ink on Paper
10 x 7 inches, 2008

Head, Ink on Paper, 7 x 9 inches, 2010 Head, Ink on Paper, 9.25 x 7 inches, 2010 Aaamar Kabi, Ink on Paper, 14 x 10 inches, 2008

Untitled, Ink on Paper, 8.5 x 6.5 inches, 2012 Head, Ink on Paper, 7.25 x 8.5 inches, 2011 Durga, Ink on Paper, 10 x 7 inches, 2012

Head, Ink on Paper, 7 x 9 inches, 2012 Head, Ink on Paper, 7 x 9 inches, 2012 Head, Ink on Paper, 7 x 9 inches, 2012

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Head, Acrylic Newspaper Pigments Ink on Board, 6.5 x 8.75 inches

Ganesha I, Pen Drawing, Ganesha II, Pen Drawing, Ganesha III, Pen and Ink on paper 52 Restless Creativity
9.25 x 7.25 inches, 2011 9.25 x 7.25 inches, 2012 9.25 x 7.25 inches, 2011

Head, Pen & Ink on Coloured Bull, Ink on Coloured Paper,
Paper, 5.25 x 8 inches, 2012 8 x 6 inches, 2012

Head, Ink on Conte Paper, Head, Pen & Ink on Coloured Bull, Ink on Coloured Paper,
7 x 6 inches, 2012 Paper, 6.5 x 9.4 inches, 2012 9 x 6.5 inches, 2012

Restless Creativity 53 Head, Ink on Paper, Horse, Pen and Ink on Paper, Horse, Ink on Paper,
7 x 7 inches, 2012 6.5 x 8.25 inches, 2010 7 x 9 inches, 2010

Bull, Ink on Paper, 13 x 20 inches, 2012 Horse, Pen and Ink on Paper, 8 x 11.5 inches

Horse Doodles, Pen & Ink on Paper, 9 x 8.5 inches Horse, Ink on Paper, 8 x 5 inches, 2012

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Horse, Ink on Paper, 14 x 21 inches, 2008 Horse, Ink on Paper, 7 x 9.5 inches, 2012

Bull & Horse Drawing, Pen & Ink on Paper, Horse, Ink on Paper, 7 x 7 inches, 2012
6.5 x 9 inches, 2012
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EROTIC SERIES 56 Restless Creativity

Woman & Horse, Mixed Media on Paper, 10.5 x 12.25 inches, 2002

Restless Creativity 57 Colour based Drawings I, Watercolour, Pen & Ink on Handmade Paper, 13.5 x 9.5 inches, 2003

Colour Based Drawings II & III, Acrylic, Watercolour, Pen & Ink on Handmade Paper,
13.5 x 9.5 inches, 2002 (each)

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Colour Based Drawings IV & V, Acrylic, Watercolour, Pen & Ink on Handmade Paper,
13.5 x 9.5 inches, 2003 (each)

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Erotic Series I, Pen & Ink on Paper, Erotic Series II, Ink on Magazine Paper, Erotic Series III, Ink on Magazine Paper,
10.5 x 7.5 inches, 2010 11 x 7.5 inches, 2010 7.5 x 5.5 inches, 2011

Making Love Series I Making Love Series II Making Love Series III, Pen & Ink
Pen and Ink on Paper Pasted Pen and Ink on Paper Pasted on Paper, 10.75 x 7.5 inches, 2013
on Board 9.5 x 7 inches, 2011 on Board 13.5 x 9.25 inches, 2011

Erotic Series IV, Reversible, Pen & Ink on Paper, 14 x 10.5 inches 60 Restless Creativity

Nudity

She didn't have clothes, no straws, no leaves Nude Drawing, Charcoal on Paper
so she dressed herself in the sky 12.5 x 10 inches, 1996
the gossamer fabric brushes its hem
against onion-shaped domes, the minarets

like the faint memories of Rembrandt's 'Roman Daughter'
the shame in a woman's breasts, the life-giving milk
or Mahasweta's 'Standayini' – the breast giver.
And mercy? Who talks about that?
Books talk only of incest, newspapers of sensation

revolvers, guns, tanks replacing hearts!

The glass shatters in the eyes of a dervish
who stands with lonely aspens, forsaken rosaries
forlorn skins, countries, skies, cries.

…the prayers have forsaken her
gods crack at her doorstep
dawn wipes the incineration
she was born of. She becomes
Clean. Slate. Nude. Pure.

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(i) (ii)

(i) Head I, Mixed Media on Board,
19.5 x 15.25 inches, 2002

(ii) Head II, Mixed Media on Board
15 x 20 inches, 2002

(iii) Head III, Mixed Media on Board
11 x 13 inches

(iv) Head IV, Mixed Media on Board
12 x 10 inches, 2003

(v) Head V, Mixed Media on Board
13 x 11.5 inches

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(iii) (iv)
(v)

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The Geisha Painted on My Washroom Wall

It's not Noor Jahan's bathtub
Boiling with roses.
Scented oil.
Still.

A scent travels with the wind
Opening layers of ships – Ibis and Theseus
Between worlds that float
In their bosom;
Fruits of blue light flit through the dark bottle of
Eau De Poison.

Each drop a twinkling fairy light
That drips when you chop a name
Polish its space, weed its syllables
Break open the diphthongs
Taste the salt between the shades of ink
and dry it on the foreheads bereft of prayer marks,
releasing Cain's crows in a garden
where a geisha's parasol is censored in the white of tiles
she drops cherry blossoms
in the several images

flushed every day on copper plates
stored in light, to pass from vendors
to tea stalls, cold benches, wet parks
to Murakami left on Queen's Way to gather dew
and nothing new.

Noor Jahan – Mughal empress said to have discovered scent of roses

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Travel Diaries Japan, Acrylic Water Colour Pigment & Ink on paper, 17.5 x 28.5 inches, 2007

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Travel Dairies Paris I A Small Wish
Mixed Media on Paper, 19 x 14.5 inches, 1987
When the Moon
66 Restless Creativity drowns herself in the water lilies of Monét
pin a few broken
couplets
at the satin edge
of my skirt with poppies and pansies.

And
let a torn lace
from my bodice
bandage
the crushed
breaths on your mahogany bed.

And when
the naked mirrors cover themselves
with blue starlight
tuck the emerald
of the earth
in my hair
and let these forests bloom
as jasmine, olives, and sandalwood
on the white horse of your pillow
that rides
on the wet waist
of Heer.

Each drunk moment
opens as a full-blown pink lilac
climbing to the ceiling
that onyx eyelashes paint
frescoes on.

Hook the anchors
of my floating soul
to the crystal beaches
of maple songs
that fall
on the folds of a naked rose
…and
sleep, sleep, my Love, sleep…

The blush dawning on hill-tops
shall wipe your gulposh
windows clean…

Travel Dairies Paris II, Mixed Media on paper, 19 x 14.5 inches, 1987

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Durga 97, Mixed Media on Board,
10 x 8 inches, 1997

Chinese Man, Mixed media on Paper,
11 x 11 inches, 2005

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Confrontation Series, Oil on Canvas, 58 x 70 inches, 1993

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Untitled, Oil Acrylic & Coins on Canvas, 58 x 66.5 inches, 2010

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Untitled, Oil Acrylic & Coins on Canvas, 60 x 66 inches, 2010

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MIXED-MEDIA SERIES

What No One Knows About Fire

Her father's house was salt Collage Series I, Acrylic Fevicryl Fire on Foil
disappearing in red flood pasted on Foil
a jungle-fire on the tip of a match-stick 12 x 7.25 inches, 2010
I'd erased it on the thick canvas
waiting for charcoals
to settle down in my soul
the cinders whisper:
the stars don't know about light
until darkness tells them;
throw your soul in the garden
like cut grass
where the koels will pick their nests from.

Noon is a sickle beneath our wings,
chopping long shadows
and when toes stitch piazzas
the departed rise in the wind gasping
underneath.

There is no flower on your forehead;
pray for autumn,
cold fire.

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Revenge

She wasn't allowed to touch the
roses; they said she was the dark
blood of profanity. The sweet sap
of Satan. She smiled, opened her
wings – very white the colour of
Eve's face when she found herself
beside Adam.

She looked up the treetops,

took all the birds, gathered them

on her knuckles and let them fly

inside her sonnets. A yellow

canary sat on the proud qaaf,

while blue-green humming birds

chose the zers below the

consonants like seaweed floating

under the bottom of boats. Untitled, Wood Iron Oil & Mixed Media on Board,

The sparrows chose aleph 31 x 20 inches, 2009

– the proud minaret – the significance of The One. She chiselled the birds into words,

knowing that we are free inside our bodies the way these birds fly inside letters. She nails

her skin to their wings mocking Eden to show what it threw and insulted can both walk

and fly.

She is the dark blood
She is the Felony
She is what Eve couldn't be…

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(ii)

A Clay Urn

…is a surrender to the shape tuberoses that cast the giant filigree coming down on us
to the grand design, the curse of stars; in lacy umbels, crossing the joints of our fingers
the secret of the sky is not more rising to embrace the silent urn, its brown swims
than the petrichor releasing in a dry garden in the shaft of skylight, holding the dust of simoom
when the warm April senses its cruelty its belly full of waterfalls, the secret sounds
dusting a distant dream of frosted lamp brackets rising, singing, swelling, reaching the outline of its handle
that divide darkness and light between the kiss of a thumb, the blind doors in its cosmology;

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(iii) (iv)

Collage Series (ii), (iii) & (iv)
Mixed Media on Paper, 13 x 12 inches, 2010 (each)

Collage Series (v), Mixed Media on
thick Imported Paper,
16 x 11 inches, 2010

it searches for answers of the absurd.
guards the songs in our hair
the starlight stuck within
we sit under its giant shadow
stroke the lines on its hard belly, leave imprint of our palms
and play clay dwarves that can alter
the anatomy of the earth, the wrongs of the cosmos

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(vi) (vii)
Collage Series (vi) to (ix)
Mixed Media, Paper, Foil, Acrylic, 23 x 16 inches, 2010 (each)

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(viii) (ix)

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Penographic I, II & III
20 x 14 inches, 2013

Single Edition 1/1 (each)

(i) (ii) 78 Restless Creativity

(i) Rare Collage Series, Pen and Ink Acrylic Nails
Feather Foil on Paper Pasted on Board
14.5 x 9.5 inches, 1993

(ii) Untitled, Pins on Canvas,
56 x 56 inches

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GALLERY COLLECTION

A Fable of Rain in Calcutta

We are the memory but there's no fire
of water, despite that the wood belongs to it;

the rain inside us it rains till the city disappears
knows in unmarked calendars, faces
it has to return blind windows, trapped breeze
where it comes from; the red of buildings, tiles, roofs
all disappear inside a dawn
it tries to escape, rises and comes down that never saw its light.
in drops
over graves, moss-laden The thick carpets inside dark museums
on silent grass guarding the feet of obelisks; soak the blood and light of yesteryears
the ashen chandeliers,
the early morning light trembles, stands a charcoal sky
at the rectangular marble underneath statues and swords sleep alike.
marked with Henry Derozio's name
a little stream sluices from the other two words My face remembers what I looked like
like the tiny graves of children inside Park Street Cemetery before washing off its skin
the fresh-green trees, their leafy burdens with warm rain and filling the gaps
over glass-finish streets, empty with flags that people in my time
of wars, bugles, yuccas, soldiers, servants, epidemics. wore as talismans
for the exorcism of rain,
The rain-soaked windows blur the thick grey smoke for the mad dance in blood.
rising from a kerosene stove somewhere in Little Russell Street

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Banglaar Maati Banglaar Jaul
Acrylic on Canvas
60 x 60 inches, 2005

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Horse Head, Acrylic on Canvas,
48 x 48 inches, 2006

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Bull, Mixed Media on Paper
23.5 x 16.5 inches, 2009

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Horse Head, Acrylic & Oil on Canvas, Details of works at the right
32 x 32 inches, 2006
Head Series (i) to (iv)
84 Restless Creativity Mixed Media on Board
10 x 8 inches, 1997

(i) (ii)

(iii) (iv)

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(i)
(iii) 86 Restless Creativity

(ii)
(iv)

(i) to (iii) Horses, Charcoal on Paper
35 x 21 inches, 1960

(iv) Horse, Conte on Paper
31 x 20.5 inches

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(i) (ii) 88 Restless Creativity

(iii) (iv)

(v) (vi) (i) – (vi) Woman & Horse,
Mixed Media on Thick Paper
9 x 8.5 inches

Horse & Bull, Mixed Media on Bull, Mixed Media on
Handmade paper, 9 x 8.5 inches Handmade paper, 8 x 7.5 inches

Restless Creativity 89 Horses, Mixed Media on Horse & Bull, Mixed Media on
Handmade paper, 10.5 x 11.25 inches Handmade paper, 10.5 x 11.25 inches

Are You the One Who Sobbed in Shahid's Arms?

My forehead permanently shone with breeze eating her fingers
For kissing five times the floor-stone that rise with minarets.

I was born a prophecy, Prayers break into beads
An ultimatum of sins stuck between star lights
In contours of an apple that measure the depth of her last tear.
And Eve.
Her body was a clay lamp.
Naked leaves were her sanatorium
Mine, too. She lit it up, wanted to burn
“The Fire is from Hell, your body is not yours,”
With each sunset, my slavery renews –
slavery to dark fruits, owl hoots scriptures opened another book in her iris.
silver nights, candle days They didn't tell her about war-brothels,
adding layers to my shadow. maps pulsating with bombs,
the terror of black and white.
A silhouette that was thrown from Eden
to Lanka, to Jeddah Yet there is a promise of peace
in after life the eternal joys.
still wandering in its skin Grapes the size of pitchers.
in towns, rivers, wilds, wells
howling, shrieking, wailing The pearl palaces too clean, too pure
to hold two feet of earth for her grubby chipped nails, fingers.
that slips and promises
to wring her ribcage on resurrection She stains her body with light,
for not covering her bust tears her skin, the holy text falls
that was full of wild blooms; like lorem ipsum between columns.

the mirror shows her the depth of mud She pastes herself in spaces
dug two yards deep between beheaded crowns and mumbles:
it couldn't show her those eyes
that dropped diamonds “Dear Prophet
on mornings stretched after you no one will come
then who sobs at my arms?”
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Shahid – US Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali

Timepiece, Oil on Canvas, 30 x 30 inches, 1999

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Untitled, Ink on Paper, 22 x 14 inches, 1983 92 Restless Creativity

Untitled, Pen & Ink on Paper, 24 x 14 inches, 1983 Untitled, Pen & Ink on Paper, 22 x 8.25 inches, 1983

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