Santosh Mahale paints a love letter to Bengaluru with 'Birdseye Bangalore' showcase

They say that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. This couldn’t be truer in the case of Birdseye Bangalore. This ongoing art exhibition by Australia-based artiste Santosh Mahale is a look back on his life and memories in Bengaluru, his home. Blending the sciences of cartography, architectural design and an understanding of the city’s civic planning, Santosh ideation of the city’s reflection infuses elements of what he loved about the city.

Using the unconventional yet expressive angle of the bird’s eye, Santosh reimagines the essence of ’90s Bengaluru in its entirety. He showcases various landmarks and neighbourhoods on a single canvas in these artworks with the use of geometric lines and figures guiding the eye through the various neighbourhoods. In our conversation with Santosh, we further understand how this signature style arrived to him, how he honed it further, what makes such artworks special, what his transition from a management consultant to a painter was like and lots more.

Santosh’s artistic journey began with capturing the essence of the cities he visited and lived in. “In 2008, when I went to London, I didn’t want to buy another teacup or a fridge magnet. I just thought to myself: I’ll just paint my London in one canvas. It is a big city, with a lot of things to do and experience. So, I thought of painting ‘my London.’ That triggered it to become a souvenir,” he says. After returning to Melbourne, he made artworks similar to those he made in London. It was the success of a solo exhibition showcasing Bird’s Eye Melbourne post-COVID-19 that further fueled his desire to return to his roots and share a similar experience with Bengaluru.

There’s much more to the Birdseye series than what meets the eye. Storytelling has been the primary goal of the artist for his projects. Banking on this comprehensive perspective, Santosh aims to trigger a sense of familiarity and nostalgia in viewers. “I want to give people enough to orient themselves. Once they are orientated, I want them to go on their journey, finding their memories or connections to those places. If not memories, then I want them to have the curiosity and ask: hey why have you put that in Malleshwaram?” he explains.

Indulging in art full-time came with a lot of doubts. However, the supportive reactions of his fellow NRIs in Melbourne to a Bengaluru piece during his showcase in the Australian city piqued his interest in pursuing this form of artistic expression further. His family too was supportive of him. “No artist becomes successful by just doing art one day a week plus weekends. What I chose to do is I chose to pause my work for one year. I had the support of my peers and my friends could also see it on my social media, as well, that I was submerged in my art. They were able to make out that I’m not meeting them as often or saying no to many invites. It’s only when my mom said: I will support you. You come here (Bengaluru) and do it… I felt like: okay, you know what, I’m going to do it!” he shares. He summarises the last six months of his process of working on the pieces from this exhibition as, “eating, sleeping and drinking art.”

Santosh then breaks down his artworks from this series further. He highlights that patterns were a conscious inclusion in the pieces as they often get overlooked. He highlights that until drone cameras became popular people weren’t exploring this angle in any form of art as much. “For all my Bengaluru paintings, in all the seven that you’ll see I have a chukki rangoli pattern. That is a kind of rangoli popular in the city, done on the streets. It’s normally done on 16 by 16 dots or 20 by 20 dots,” he shares. Ironically, birds too play a vital role in these artworks. “Birds are always an indicator in some way or the other of a location. If I go to Mangaluru, I will get to see more exotic birds than I see in Bengaluru. So, that sort of dimension added to the picture and the name as well,” he notes.

These oil-paint artworks represent much of the heart and passion Santosh has for his artworks. Rather than a mere representation of Bengaluru, it’s the story of the city that Santosh wants people to associate Birdseye Bangalore with. With over 75 original oil paintings and 30 limited-edition prints, this exhibition will help any Bengalurean to dive into the history of the city’s streets differently.

Entry free. On till December 1.

At Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, Seshadripuram.

pranav.shriram@newindianexpress.com

pranav_shriram