It is said that once the Gorkha chieftain had tricked Kantipur, manipulated Lalitpur, and betrayed Bhaktapar’s forces to establish his rule in the Nepal Valley, he granted Jaya Prakash, the last Malla king of Kantipur, a dying wish.[break]
Jaya Prakash wanted nothing less than an umbrella—the symbol of the Mandate of Heaven – upon a sovereign. Prithvi is said to have got the message and promised that the Malla monarch would be born a Shah in the next life.
Umbrella retains its monarchical associations. When the temple priests of the Naulakha Mandir in Janakapur honored Gyanendra Shah with the ceremonial chhatra, it kicked up a controversy in Kathmandu. The humble umbrella is much more than a protection gear against sun and rain.
The needy use an umbrella for shade. It can be a stick of support. It can also be a companion for the lonely. Tucked inside an arm, waved in a hand, clipped to the shoulder, or carried in a bag—the meaning of handling an umbrella varies not only with the quality of the product, but also in the way it is used, brandished, displayed, or hidden.
No wonder, umbrellas fascinate painter Erina Tamrakar (b. 1970) so much.
Erina’s umbrellas smile. Some of them contemplate, agonize, express sadness, but also celebrate. Umbrellas become an evocative symbol of the moods of a person, even a nation, because the artiste has lived through tumultuous times in the history of the country.
The privilege of having a peep into Erina’s oeuvre offers an opportunity to learn and appreciate the wonders of colors. Her line of work is almost faultless; but her shades sing of solitude, compassion, joy, love, and longing. Sometimes they can be mystifying, at others uplifting. An attuned admirer can easily hear the music of the soul in her Touch of Purity, Women and Nature, Mother and Child, or Silhouettes in Time series of paintings.
She has tried her hand at capturing the serenity of Young Buddha, the playfulness of Ganesh, and the complexity of Krishna. She has also attempted to portray the art of the Malla Period—a form that began to degenerate after the fall of Jaya Prakash—but she is perhaps at her best in depicting moods through feminine forms.
Erina once wrote verses to explain her compositions. Now she seems to have realized that art is meant to capture emotions that cannot be expressed through words. Any attempt to elucidate art is inherently inadequate.
She is young, and looks even younger; but the maturity of her compositions bears the stamp of her hard work and relentless pursuit of excellence. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree from the Fine Arts College in Kathmandu, and has been a Fellow at the Korea National University of Arts in Seoul. Since 1989, she has participated in over 50 national and international group shows. But her productive habitat is the Kasthamandap Art Studio at Kopundole, an art collaborative she founded 16 years ago with likeminded creators.
Erina says that sometimes colors possess her so much that she wants to eat them. Cobalt blue and bright gold seem to grip her and force her to play with combinations of stability, harmony and unity with strength, wealth and power. Her grays depict modesty and dignity of life, with grace and calmness. However, the impression that a visitor carries back from Erina Tamrakar’s studio is that of irrepressible passions for a life of joy—her muted or bright shades of red linger in the memory.
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