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"Bani is Guru, Guru is Bani. Within the Bani, Amrit is obtained." |
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Editor's note: This article expresses the personal sentiments of the author, as a way to inspire thinking "outside of the box." Is Bani only written? Or can it also be spoken, sung, painted and acted out? Of course it can! Bani can be all those. You can speak it, sing it, paint it and act it. Bani expresses concepts, emotions and experiences. You can paint concepts, emotions and experiences. You can share a range of ideas and feelings through writing but you can do that through pictures as well.
So Bani can actually be painted, not just as calligraphy, but also as paintings, as pictures. Naturally if Bani can be painted then certainly the Guru can be painted as well, because the Guru is one with Bani. He is inseparable from his teachings. So when someone has an experience of the teachings, they also get a glimpse of the Guru. I had certain experiences of Bani that lead me to paint my experiences. The Guru was very much a part of my experiences! In my experiences, it was Him who experienced His own teachings, and I was only a witness! Why are paintings valuable? Because they move people.
Both words and paintings can express concepts, emotions and experiences. There is a reason why "A painting is worth a thousand words" that is because paintings can instantly capture the attention and guide it towards a specific experience. In just one glance, it can make you feel happy, make you feel inspired and uplifted and even teach something valuable in the process! Many of my early paintings were lessons in history. I wanted to teach the youth about the admirable figures in Sikh history. I wanted to present them in a way that caused the viewer to want to read about the individual and their story. To accomplish that I always included a verse of Gurbani and a bit of history for my viewers, next to the painting. When people ask me what inspires me to paint? I give them a short answer "Sikh history and its awesomeness!" But the long answer reveals something important. The reason why I became attached to Sikhi, Sikhi Art and Sikh History was because I saw paintings by Sobha Singh, Kirpal Singh, Devender Singh, Mehar Singh, Bodh Raj and B. M. Anand and countless other artists who painted Sikh history. These artists poured their souls into their paintings. They inspired me! Their paintings ignited a fire inside me, at a very young age! You know when I was 11, I attended a gurudwara on Sunday for gurmat, Punjabi and kirtan classes. When the principal of this academy heard that I could draw, he encouraged me and bought me paints, brushes, Bristol boards and canvases. He then gave me small images of historical paintings done by Kirpal Singh to enlarge onto the big Bristol boards. He wanted to hang them around the Gurudwara to tell our history to those unfamiliar with it. So he wanted me to paint the small photos onto a large board to be viewed in the langar hall. I did this for several years, creating paintings during summer, during my spare time, until he resigned from the academy. I have neither seen him nor my paintings for many years now, however, those experiences stuck with me forever. That's how I got into learning about Sikh history. It was paintings got me started, and now, kirtan and simran keeps me going.
All of my life experiences, all of my meditations and internal struggles, all the shabads that I have read, sung and contemplated, have fuelled this fire into a deeper and more profound passion. And it's all been condensed in to my paintings so that the viewer may get a taste of that for themselves. Passion is something that can be cultivated by everyone, high or low. I hope my paintings inspire within the viewer a passion. The kind of passion that we see exuded by Guru Ramdas ji when he composes shabads expressing his deep and intense longing for Hari. The kind of passion we see exuded by Sahibzada Ajit Singh when he charges towards Mughal forces, fearlessly, and fights till he is cut apart piece by piece. The kind of passion we see exuded by Guru Gobind Singh ji when he fights all those battles, sacrifices his entire family, and then only has gratitude in his heart at Machhiwara.
For me it's all about passion, passion for a greater cause, for a power higher than oneself, passion for Sikhi, Sikhi Art and Sikh History.
My paintings are available for purchase at SikhiArt.com Related Links: https://www.facebook.com/
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After all, words have developed from simplified pictures over a long period of human history. They may appear detached from paintings now but their origins lie very much in paintings. Just look at the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. These are picture-words and they are laid out like sentences across the walls of the great pyramids. When you look at the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, you are looking at the evolution of writing and how it evolves from painting pictures. 
