One of paintings’ more exciting duets, “A Path, and a meeting” is currently on in the heart of Brickfields in a unique art centre-cum-gallery, Symbols House of Natural Art. It is duet relatively unique because it brings together up-and-coming younger artist Jeganathan Ramachandram and respected veteran Yeoh Jin Leng for the first time, and is a display of their newest grapplings with their chosen subject matters and mediums.

Both men have been attracted to the spiritual yearnings of the soul from the time they started off as artists and, although have taken different paths in acquiring painterly skills, they have never stopped trying to best portray this through various ways. Personal conversations with them have thus always been more of the usual “Hi, have you seen my latest show?”. Their travels, especially those of the older man, have largely been about finding out what moves human societies to create art and craft. And their works have a sense of sincerity about them, in terms of experiments with new techniques or colours, and taking an honest look at the artistic direction they are heading in.

Jeganathan, also known as Jega, has built a reputation in vastu shastra, a Hindu-based practice similar to feng shui, as well as in painting that uses a traditional Indian dotting technique. Holding strongly to Hinduism and vastu science, Jega is a modern artist who combines his art practice with his outlook on life. Indeed, a number of his paintings are composed -- right down to carefully selected shades of colour -- with the aim of imbibing the viewer with a sense of emotional, mental and physical harmony in line with vastu shastra. And his works add to comparatively small stable of visual art and resulting artistic journeys by Malaysians of Indian descent.

Jin Leng -- aside from his extremely impressive biodata in pioneering abstract expressionism and arts education in this country -- has made it a continuing goal to capture the rasa (feeling), the abhinaya (expression) and the purity of dance movement celebrated in Hindu mythology, and the performing arts this spawns. So solid is his technique, artistic aim and response to fellow artists -- even those very much junior to him -- that even flicks of charcoal on paper produce sketches that seem to move just like the dancers portrayed.

Both men have naturally attracted the admiration of dance guru Ramli Ibrahim who has, on several occasions, hosted exhibitions of their work in his premises at Sutra House, Kuala Lumpur. Hence, the intra-artist gesture of a Ramli solo at the opening of “A path, and a meeting”.

By the way, Jega and Jin Leng tell me opening that attracted around 70 people to the small art space. Some of these visitors -- who had been milling around at the Deepavali fair held at the open air (KL Sentral) car-park opposite the gallery -- had never been into an art gallery before. One happily notes that Symbols House of Natural Art is different from most of Klang Valley’s private galleries in this way and hopes that it’s location -- next to the main Tun Sambanthan street of the humble but bustling hive of heritage and modernity that is Brickfields -- will be the first point of contact, in terms of art, for many a man on the street.

Work-wise, both artists have pushed themselves to the next level, in line with their outlook on life, with Jin Leng seeming to have pushed further. Jega’s new batch of paintings bear a gradual shift from scenes made up of images and colours marked by

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evenly-proportioned square grids. His new works like “Within all … within the small and the big, within the seen and the unseen” are made up of images of divided along square grids as well as vertical and circular shapes. There is also a use of stronger shades of colours and water droplets, all of which probably work better, in terms of making a visual statement.

Works like “In Oneness” induce less of a sense of balance through equal proportions and instead experiments with the use of religious imagery; the figure of Jesus and the lotus symbolising Buddha are two of the familiar imageries used. The viewer is challenged to look at religion in new ways that ultimately lead to better understanding.

“Within the Ocean of the Mind”, which shows a man in a yoga pose, is the artist’s effort to reproduce calm on canvas. This work also marks Jega’s artistic interaction with Kalakshetra-trained Indian classical dancer Parveen Nair who played the muse; a taking up fro Jin Leng perhaps? All the works bear Jega’s characteristic homage to Nature and belief in the use of “colour therapy”. Each painting also comes with a poem by Jega who likes expressing his thoughts through the written word as well.

Jin Leng’s works show not a shift but a leap into his next level of painterly exploration. And he allows visitors to partake in his journey through samples of earlier charcoal sketches that lead on to a travel diary full of ink jottings and ink, and paint drawings. These have led to six full-scale paintings that can be described as bold and energetic in use of colours -- from a palette Jin Leng says he came across in kolam or sanjhi designs while on his travels, spread across three years, to temples and villages in Tamil Nadu, and Orissa, India.

Gone is the earlier use of softer hues and thick lines of the body in dance. In place of these are full-pigmented orange against a dark green, magenta and cobalt blue, and canvas dancers so energised that their outlines have merged. The artist’s favourite piece? One where he saw, in his mind’s eye, the dancers bodies so energised that they take on all colours in the “mother colour” of white against a riotously coloured background.

Jin Leng's six paintings form his "Rasa Leela" series which he says is inspired from the symbolism of the spring round dance of the Gopis (maidens) who can’t help but want to be constantly around the cowherd Krishna, a personification of the Divine. This symbolism, he explains, reflects “the romantic emotion, the raja rasa, the king of emotions, permeated with … what it is to be human … seeking the ultimate in the cosmic dance of life”.

To the arts enthusiast or collector, the works in “A path, and a meeting” are significant in that they represent the journeys of two artists moved by the purpose behind continuous exploration, and are results of a meeting a long time coming.

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Veronica Shunmugam edits Kakiseni.

“A path, and a meeting” began on 4th November 2007 and runs until 4th December 2007. More details here.