How Clyde D’Mello captures the concept of time through his art Premium

How Clyde D’Mello captures the concept of time through his art

Greek gods. Old Testament prophets. Fire and Brimstone. Time and Space. There is a recurrence of these topics in the works of visual artist Clyde D’Mello and with good reason.

Most people remember that defining moment in their lives with clarity. So does visual artist Clyde D’Mello. “As a child I would frequent a bookstore near the church every week. There I picked up a book on classical art — it was the catalogue of the Prado Museum in Spain. That was my introduction to the fine arts,” says Clyde, adding that he was around 12 years old then.

Pursuing art and becoming an artist turned into his goal and to this end, he graduated from Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath (KCP) in Bengaluru and later Shantiniketan in West Bengal, where he enrolled for his masters in Fine Arts.

“I chose to delve deeper into art history to have an overall view of art as I didn’t want to be ignorant of what I am working on. It was at Shantiniketan that I picked up on the nuances of drawing as an art practice. At that time, it was mostly in reference to the great masters and classical art, albeit in a satirical sense,” he says, adding that a few of his early shows were largely textual or on graphic design, “drawing was not a part of it then.”

During a residency program in Japan, Clyde fell in love with Japanese ink (Sumi ink) and that became his medium of choice. “A lot of works on display at Clockworks were created with this ink.”

He believes his taking to Sumi ink is serendipitous considering that while at Shantiniketan they learnt a lot about Japanese aesthetic, a concept Tagore deeply favoured.

As is the case with most readers in the city, the discovery of the Blossoms Book House was a game changer for Clyde whose library just “grew and grew,” with classics and works by the Stoics jostling for his attention alongside tomes on art history and Greek mythology.