I write this
with a really heavy heart. When I first moved to Goa, I was asked to write a feature on some of Goa’s
top contemporary artists. After meeting the elusive painter Shireen Mody and
seeing her incandescent art, I immediately included her in my list. Despite
producing a large body of work and with a number of sell out shows to her
credit, Shireen never courted hype or adulation. She didn’t belong to any
particular group and preferred to stay under the radar, and yet had a large and
growing number of dedicated collectors who followed her shows keenly.
Whether it was her sun dappled ‘Beach’ series in soothing tones
of blues and whites, interspersed with more vibrant tones or the stunning
series on the September flower in ‘Mutabilis’, a show with her
illustrator-artist daughter Saffron Wiehl, Shireen’s favourite subject and constant
inspiration was always Goa.
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A series on the colourful Saturday Night Market was an almost
instant sell-out show while other works on animals, fisherfolk and Goa’s
natural environment delighted with their compelling sense of colour,
composition and texture. But, it was with her last series that the artist
really came into her own – a superb series on the coconut palms of Goa. She
worked on it over the last few years and really pushed the envelope in terms of
creating a style and technique so distinguishably different that it was truly
brilliant. I had the rare privilege to see her at work on a painting in this
series and it really blew me away. Gradually getting closer and closer to these
palm leaves that she cherished so much, it was like Shireen had totally merged
with her subject, drawn in to reflect its minutest detail. Highly influenced by
the Impressionists, Shireen had complete mastery over creating luminous
canvases.
The entirely
self-taught artist regularly hosted an annual show in her home-based gallery
space since the early 1990s. Over the years, the show grew into a highly
anticipated event for collectors eager to include the reclusive artist’s works
in their collections. Recently, she opened Studio Arpora to showcase her work
alongside Saffron’s to a wider audience.
Tracing growth and
decay through her beautiful paintings of the September flower growing in her
much loved garden she had said to me, “It is a flower that changes its colour
during the day. It starts as white – goes to a light pink – and keeps turning
darker throughout the day before it eventually dies.” Those words take on an
inexpressible poignancy today when the natural arc of her life wasn’t allowed
to take its course.
RIP
Shireen.
