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

Art by Clyde D’Mello. Photo: Special Arrangement

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.

Clyde D’Mello. Photo: Special Arrangement

“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.”

Art by Clyde D’Mello. Photo: Special Arrangement

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.

In the midst of all this was Dante’s Divine Comedy with detailed descriptions of inferno, purgatorio and paradiso (hell, purgatory and heaven). “Quite a few pieces in the show are inspired by that and the books of Revelations and Ezekiel in the Bible which are about the end of time. The prophetic books from the Bible were some of my favourite when I was growing up because of their vivid imagery.”

Art by Clyde D’Mello. Photo: Special Arrangement

Despite his passion and encouragement by the likes of artist Shibu Arakkal who told him to, “draw anything, create what is in your head,” Clyde found himself hesitating. “I remember visiting an exhibition of South African artist William Kentridge in Mumbai a few years ago and being floored by the nature and body of work on display. The pandemic gave me time to realise that I don’t need to be restricted but to try things and see what happens. I began working on collages and different media such as dry pastels and charcoal and work on printed text.”

The result is Clockworks, a collection of his works from 2017, with sizes ranging from 5×4” (a single dictionary page) and 8×6” (a double sheet) to larger pieces of 12×27” and 20×24”. A page from the catalogue of the Prado Museum which got him hooked to art is also a part of one of the works currently on display.

Art by Clyde D’Mello
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

There’s a mystical, surreal storybook feel to Clyde’s work, though more Alice-in-Wonderland than Arabian Nights.

“Inferno and Paradiso are imagined ideas of Hell and Heaven. My depiction of Heaven has a lot to do with Science and my enjoyment of it; one of my works shows an apple falling down — a tribute to Newton’s Law and physics. There’s another one about the stars in the sky which we view by looking up into the heavens.”

Art by Clyde D’Mello
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

“On the other hand, my view of Purgatorio is specific to the earth bound by ideas of time, hence the presence of the hour glass, sundial and clocks in my work.”

Clockworks of Dream and Reality by Clyde D’Mello will be on display at Gallery Time and Space till June 22.

Art by Clyde D’Mello
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

Art by Clyde D’Mello
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

Art by Clyde D’Mello
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement