Ravi Chalise

Ravi Chalise

Realism and Expressionism in Ravi Chalise’s Artworks

As the saying goes, ‘The poets reach even in the place where the sun has not reached’, to express the feelings and experiences of the creators in holistic manner, one of the mediums of expression like word, colour and brush or music may not be enough. Literature, painting, sculpture, and music are the genres of arts to express human sensitivities, social reality and imagination. Most of the literary writers and artists express their feeling through one of these medium. Nevertheless, few multidimensional creators have gained success not only to exploit one medium but multiple genres of art.

Poet Rabindranath Tagore, artist Pablo Picasso, Leonardo Da Vinci, Shakespeare, King Pratap Malla, King Bhupatindra Malla, Lainsingh Bangdel, Balkrishna Sama, Manujbabu Mishra, Madanath Prashrit, Jadish Sumsher Rana and Yogi Bikasananda are some of the multitalented personalities who exploited two or more than tow alternative mediums for their expression. As the iniation to disclose the hidden talents, we have taken the paintings of renowned story writer and novelist Ramesh Vikal.

Ramesh Vikal used to practice painting in his leisure time. The effect of this can be felt his writing as well, and it has left lively and attractive impression. Vikal has a number of names. He signs his artworks as ‘Rabi Chalise’. He has not studied painting formally. However, he learned painting from Anandamuni Shakya and Chandraman Singh Maskey at the beginning. Later he took Govindanarayan Jyapoo and K.K. Karmacharya as his art Guru. Then he created a number of paintings. Despite the fact that painting was his hobby, he has created paintings of social context and landscapes including mountains, rivers, streams, Himalaya and other natural scenes, He was also very much interested to paint portraits. He has painted the portraits of his parents, grandparents, literary figures, artists, scientists and leaders. He has used water colour, oil colour, pencil, chalk and so on as his medium of painting. Most of his paintings have been included in exhibitions which aims to reveal the hidden aspect of the renowned personality.

As the creator cannot express his feeling and experiences using only one medium, it is natural to seek for alternative mediums of expressions. As some of the experiences and emotions cannot be expressed through words, the creators attempts to express through paint and brush. As some of the feelings cannot be expressed even though words and colours, the creator attempts to use music to express himself. He takes the way to generalize what he has seen. Sometimes, the creator exploits all the mediums like colour, word and music to express him. Rabi Chalise or the renowned writer Ramesh Vikal is one of the multidimensional and multitalented creators who has carved his identity in the domain of Nepali art and literature.

Of course, literature is the principal genre of Ramesh Vikal. In additional to this, he has created important artworks in the genre of fine arts as the alternative medium of expression. Vikal has contributed more or less in all the four generes of fine arts like painting, ceramics, stone sculpture and music. In additional to painting, artist Rabi Chalise has exploited different mediums of sculpture. On the process of creating art, at one time, he experienced to reate art by getting the clay brought from Thimi to make terracotta sculpture, wax mould and concrete portrait, and carve wood by bringing soft wood. Among them we have seen a bust of woman in terracotta and the beautiful portrait of Leo Tolstoy in concrete. Unfortunately, they have not been found safe now.

Among with pen and brush, Ramesh Vikal has used music, as one of the powerful mediums of expressions. He could play Tabla, harmonium, violin, flute and Sitar well. Among them his favorites were flute and violin.

His journey of writing fictions of critical realism in the domain of Nepali literature in 2006 B.S. with the publication of “Garib(The poor)” in Sharada. As in his fictions and non-fictions, Rabi Chalise’s artwork depict relism. Instead of ‘art for art’s sake’, his artworks of all generes and medium depict the perspective of ‘art for life’s sake’. The major aspect of Vikal’s artworks is the clear expression of social relity and psychological experiences. Despite the fact that the major trend of Vikal’s artworks is relism, expressionism has been practiced by Nepali artist to express the personal inner feelings and emotions as the German expressionist. The expressionist distorted and altered the colours and images to express the inner emotions. Althought Rabi Chalise’s artwork do not depict such distortion, they left some clear signs and suggestions of expressionism in his colour and images.