India 2004

MARTIN YEOMAN
INDIA 2004
Indar Pasricha Fine Arts London

"Martin Yeoman The Artist as Traveller"
Forward by Lutz Becker.

'Exchanges between Europe and East Asia started in the 12th century, when Merchants from Venice began trading with China and India. The Venetians brought rare silks and spices to the West. Since the early 17th century, with the establishment of the East India Company, British travellers were drawn to India in increasing numbers. An expanding trade with India and the desire to establish permanent bases there motivated their journeys. The promise of great riches and the excitement of entering barely charted geographic regions attracted adventurers.

Later travellers followed those ancient trade routes into the unknown, passages that revealed the unusual, stimulated a hunger for the exceptional, for exquisite remoteness and for unknown spiritual dimensions. Strange, often precious artefacts and tales of travels and adventures, which were brought back to Europe, awakened a curiosity for new horizons and different kinds of knowledge. India charmed and bedazzled the traveller who came to question the values of his European worldview and cultural identity. The traveller, in search of the Other, found himself entangled in a set of painful realisations: despite the fact that travelling was a quest for an alternative, for the unusual, for change, the traveller found only himself, and could not be the Other. This tension increased the sense of mystery. India, like the Orient, became a region of desire, a desire that could not be stilled as it contained the awareness of the incomplete, the unattainable.

No doubt, the modern traveller to India is exposed to the same desires and similar tensions, which may be caused by high expectations that fade into disenchantment. The magic is still there, but it is harder to find. Easy accessibility through air-travel erodes the capability to be enchanted. The traveller has turned into a tourist who carries with him the discomforts and doubts of his own culture, who too easily projects them into his encounter with contemporary India. For the Western traveller the departure and the journey itself are undramatic, only the arrival counts. Once there, attitudes change: Despite a high degree of information previously absorbed through television and other media, the traveller to India still wants to be surprised and still feels the need to complete his knowledge. Experience counteracts prejudice, it complements theoretical pre-knowledge. To go through this process is decisive for any artist who travels to India now, as it bears the gift of an extension and enhancement of his sensibilities.

Martin Yeoman is a traveller who is prepared to be changed by his experience, who is ready to take the risk self-questioning entails. He is an artist who has entered India with calm anticipation and a readiness to be enchanted and challenged by her ancient civilisation. In l973 Yeoman travelled overland via Pakistan to India. The holy shrine at Amritsar made a lasting impression on the young man. It was here that he decided to become a painter. In l986 Yeoman accompanied the Prince of Wales to the Middle East and in l989 to the Far East. In 1992 he was invited to join the Prince and the Princess of Wales on their visits to India and Nepal. Naturally, the haste of the Royal Tours did not allow the kind of deep engagement with the country, which the artist would have wanted. He felt the urge to go back to India. In 2001 and 2002 he had his wish fulfilled and was able to revisit some of the places he already knew, Agra, Delhi, Aligarh and Malabar. He travelled with a most congenial companion, the travel writer Tim Mackintosh-Smith, whose knowledge and enthusiasm he shared. Returning to sites familiar to him from previous travels connected him even more intensely with the mysterious beauty of the Sub-continent, so redolent with history and living narratives. In 2003the painter returned on his own.

Yeoman has a great awareness of his artistic range and has a firm strategy for translating experience into visual expressions; he is motivated by both curiosity and studious involvement. Trained at the Royal Academy Schools in London he has come to master the traditional techniques of painting in oil on canvas, wood or primed paper. For sketching, for fixing fleeting moments or atmospheres he prefers the directness of chalk pastels. His drawing media are pencil, silver point, burnt cork, oak gall ink, and pen on paper. His easy command of the academic procedure is tempered by his need to experiment and to constantly probe the veneer of appearance. Above all, his work betrays a deep understanding and respect for the uniqueness and originality of his subjects.

In his paintings from India Yeoman bears witness; his observations, create the present, the simultaneity of object, action and time. It is the artists' gaze that creates metaphorical space. The power of the metaphor creates the distance required for the definition of the ever-changing conditions of reality. It is the artist who finds these intangible definitions; his pictorial interpretations connect with an emotional truth, which he may share with the viewer. The artist's eye fuses present and past, a past, which reverberates in landscapes, buildings, textures and timeless shadows. Thus the act of travelling, observing, drawing and painting creates new meaning. Guided by deep empathy, Yeoman has achieved a fine understanding of the co-existence of mythology and reality in India.'

Lutz Becker, June 2004