By Jugneeta Sudan
‘I am because we are’.
A plurality of self forms the signature line for artworks by Eleanor Viegas. A language of interconnection and a holistic consciousness impregnates her works. Lasting impressions from art museums, architecture of visited landscapes and the expansiveness of western thought into eastern philosophy lend a polyphonic edge to her artwork. Originally from UK, artist and art educator Eleanor Viegas is a Goan by choice who amalgamates varied art forms in her creative expression.
Eleanor’s charming laterite residence-cum-eco-gallery is aptly called Peace Cottage. Very ‘medieval in spirit’ with tiled roof, stony archways, jali walls, red oxide seating, her house is designed and inspired by the ‘Gandhi of Architecture’, Laurie Baker. William Morris’s redefined community movement on truth and beauty through the agencies of arts & crafts forms the crux of her art practice at her vibrant dwelling in Betalbatim, Goa.
From an evocative empty chair in a stone archway and intricately stitched mirrors sewn into subtly varying squares to birds nesting in vividly embroidered palm trees and sea gulls rising from the white surf, the canvasses lining the foyer are snapshots of the Goan landscape. Eleanor’s other passion for Indian classical music surfaces in the painting depicting Bhimpalasi raag through architectural facades of Jaipur palaces with a cacophony of flying birds. She uses a mélange of artistic media—acrylic, fabric and wood to weave bright images that delight and draw the viewer into a meaningful dialogue with her work.
The origins of Eleanor’s plural self, which defines her world-view, may well lie in her inner journey. The Mandala painting with concentric circles and birds perched in the outer rings symbolizes the solid core and permanence from where flight to freedom begins. The motif recurs in her work signifying freedom from shackles that bind and keep us small. The flying birds point to attainable higher realms of liberation.
The registering, recording and reflective ‘I’ in Eleanor’s art and living is threaded with a deep engagement with luminaries like William Morris, Laurie Baker, Gandhi, and Lekhraj Kripalani. The essence of Eleanor’s tryst with art practice is summed up very cogently by Henry David Thoreau’s quote - “We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.” Here I share a part of my ongoing dialogue with her about her poetic existence.
Jugneeta Sudan: How did your journey in art begin? Girls in the 50s were most certainly encouraged to train as teachers or take up domestic science instead.
A typical Cotswolds village in central England.
Eleanor Viegas: I was born and brought up in the Cotswolds in England, in a village called Chastleton. My parents had a farm, they came from farming families. Many happy memories of going and staying with grandparents and country life and beauty of Cotswolds landscape is something that has been with me my entire life, and entered my canvas perpetually. I loved walking in nature and I would walk for miles in the woods, picking primroses and bluebells. It was wonderful. Going to church with my grandmother every Sunday, and after the service visiting her friends and having tea and chocolate cake, marked a high point for a young girl in those days. This is a lovely memory. I went to a village school until I was 11 and high school in Chipping Norton. I got my ‘O’ Levels, I think I had 7 ‘O’ Levels, and then I had to think of A levels. Mostly students took up history and English. But I wasn’t satisfied doing that, I wanted to study art, but art wasn’t encouraged then. I mean, school would try to get you to university and if you couldn’t make university then you would go to teachers training college. I didn’t want teachers training college, I didn’t want domestic science. I wanted to do art, and no one was really saying that I could do that. I have this memory of standing outside headmistress’s office feeling quite nervous because I had to go in and tell her that I wanted to study art. And in those days they wore the black gowns and the hats and it was all very scary. And she said to me, well you better go to art college then, you better leave, go to art college. So that’s what I did. I went to Art College near Oxford, the Banbury School of Art. I was there for two years and I did very well. Thereafter I had to choose where I had to take my art degree, and there were two colleges where I was accepted. One was Birmingham and the other was Brighton. And both the courses I liked, but I was advised to take up at Birmingham rather than go to Brighton. So I went to Birmingham, a big city, never felt comfortable going there from this beautiful countryside of Cotswolds. But the Birmingham college of art was a beautiful building and I loved the atmosphere of it.
JS: When did the Goa Chapter begin?
EV: My husband was on the staff of Birmingham college of art. He was a textile technologist (studied up near Manchester), and would help us with the setting up of the loom and designs. It was a bit unusual, he was much older than me, but you don’t think of it when you are in love. We got married soon after I graduated and visited Goa for the first time in 1967. I was feeling very unwell when we arrived in Goa, it was raining and it was hot and humid. My mother-in-law went out into the garden and plucked some herbs and made a drink for me which made me feel very well in no time. Goa felt very familiar to me, as if I had been here before. A very noble family with landed property connected to nature, and we came many times to visit with my two girls. Nuno Viegas planned to live in Goa when he retired but this was not meant to be. He died of a heart attack in 1988. I continued with my job in the museum and made regular trips to India until 1997 when I took early retirement and decided to settle in Goa.
Eastern philosophy had worked its magic on me, where all art is dedicated towards search for deep insight through a life of self-discipline. The work is both a prayer and inspiration, the artist is a seeker of higher wisdom, which they arrive at, time and again through their dedicated art practice.
JS: “To thy ownself be true” is a line from the film, All That Heaven Allows. When a man does not keep pace with his companions in frenzy to succeed, maybe he hears the beat of a different drummer. Maybe he has learnt not to give importance to unimportant things. What he does is to fortify his within, and live his truth. As museum educator, what were you proactively doing from the beginning of your career at the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery?
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.
EV: I formally trained as a textile artist. The teachings of William Morris and the Art and Craft Movement at the college directed my revitalization of hand embroidery projects for rural women as museum educator in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Besides, I made art pieces come alive for visiting students and teachers. I would arrange for small musical recitals to go with the paintings in the gallery. I remained in touch with these students for a long time, who went on to become artists, architects and responsible citizens.
‘Gardening with needle and colored thread,’ I masterminded a project involving a community of South Asian women setting up an energetic dialogue with art & craft. With time, the evolving artisans nimbly wove gardens of embroidered motifs, unraveled knots, untangled entanglements hearing the trickle of water in their souls become a stream of unhindered flowing energy. There is an important link between creativity, mental health and well–being of a person. Immigrant Asian women (homemakers) from India, Pakistan, Cambodia, Philippines and Africa, far away from their cultures most certainly suffer from depression, loneliness and stress. Women who had been prescribed tranquillisers by their doctors described how they came off the drugs after participating in the programme. Focus on the craft helped to awaken and energize inner resources. Reviving half-forgotten stitches and stitching up cultural divides, cultural heritage became a means of self-expression and strength.
JS: Further, the genesis of the ‘The Banyan Tree Art Project’ with village women of North & South Goa lies in your work at the Birmingham Art Museum. Embroidery and textiles through pattern and color are transmitters of tradition and culture and can be integrated into a whole language curriculum for the classroom. Though colonization is a story of oppression and exploitation, yet embroidery projects showcase a contrarian strain of integration of creative languages of diverse cultures. Lastly, as you say, the importance of women in folklore and stitch craft cannot be obscured any longer. These are highly important records that substantiated women’s existence, their role in wars, underground movements and traditional heritage of our society.
Eleanor Viegas conducting an art class.
EV: Indian art and culture has always interested me. Having made regular trips to India since 1967, I felt very confident to embark on my post graduate program in the late 80s’, ‘Fusion of Cultures in Stitchery,’ to keep alive traditional Indian embroidery rapidly disappearing in India and the west. This involved close interactions and instructions from craftsmen in India and Britain. The museum and art gallery programme had expanded over the years, I had been through a personal family crisis, the pressure to attract more people to the museum was mounting, and it all came together and I felt the need to develop my creativity. So I embarked on this in 89’, and the programme of study provided me with a creative outlet to extend my experience of India, use the community contacts for the benefit of the museum and the Asian community. My reasons for visiting Goa /India since 67’, had been to meet the family, but since embarking on this project my experience of the culture deepened both in India and Britain. As part of the introduction, I should mention the importance of India for research and also identify my relationship with the women, whom I had been working with. Indian women come to their craft from a different philosophical, religious and social basis. Goan women have an Indo-Portuguese ethos, which is very interesting. Stitch craft also plays an important function in storytelling. Religion and one’s environment plays a major role in the motifs and design. A beautiful exchange of ethos comes about in this manner. In Indian life, religion and art are one, and the process of creating a work of art is worship. For Indian women brought up with traditional values, embroidery is a means of keeping in touch with the heritage, a link to ancestral artistic wealth, which the west has forsaken. My interest and integrated programmes helped to strengthen that for the women in England. I felt I had lifted the curtain and looked under it and strengthened that in their lives. For the Asian woman, repetition in motifs and design is a natural outcome, whereas in the west innovation in creativity is the norm. The latter benefited the Goan/Asian women in their art practice.
JS: How does the ‘Banyan Tree Art Project’ help to transform women’s lives? How does it help them to tide over hard times, like for example the chaos and insecurity during the pandemic that we are all grappling with?
EV: The important link between the women and me is the shared love of hand stitchery. The process lends an experience of wholeness, of being one with the needle as it goes in and out of the cloth, a feeling of being in total harmony with oneself, the work and one’s surroundings. A deep sense of well-being and joyful seriousness pervades the work. For the women who learnt this art in their childhood, the feeling is a part of their psychic make-up, and the craft is an integral part of their existence. They slip easily into a state of total involvement. My desire to keep alive traditional embroidery skills in Goa is linked up with this personal feeling together with my belief that the practice of embroidery can help to break down barriers between nationality/race and give women a strong core and better able to cope with upheavals in life.
Artisans and artists live between two worlds, the outer world and the inner world. We can’t escape this physical world and our purpose for being here is to make it better. We have no other purpose. The mind is a powerful tool we use to create a beautiful inner world. Art can help us find that inner space and move us to a higher state of awareness, it heals, inspires and alters our brain chemistry for the better.
JS: Environmental assault wrought by homo sapiens in pursuit of making the planet a home for themselves has marked the Earth in the most horrendous way, much of which has become apparent to us during the ongoing pandemic. But your home stands an architectural gem amidst green landscape of Betalbatim, Goa.
Peace Cottage in Betalbatim, Goa.
EV: Laurence Wilfred ‘Laurie Baker,’ a British-born Indian architect, affectionately called the ‘Gandhi of architecture,’ inspired me with his simple and aesthetic sensibility. His cost effective designs triggered in me what is true in art and design, a return to beauty and harmony with nature. My romantic attachment to woodlands, flowers, birds and the sea along with my medieval ideals of chivalry and communal life, found image and form in the designing of my home in Goa. The simple clean cut lines besides lending ease and elegance offered a more spiritual, holistic experience than what was proffered through commercial art & design.
Ramesh Bandekar, a student of Laurie Baker brought Laurie’s concepts to Goa and designed many structures on the same lines throughout his career, one of which was Peace Cottage. We got on very well. I shared my ideas with him about the cottage. An art gallery, workshop areas, meditation room, music room, library, sitting/brainstorming area, guest bedrooms and my own living space. Ramesh took great interest and integrated my requirement with Laurie’s design & aesthetics, he did an accomplished job, I am delighted with the work he has done here.
JS: Your art practice amalgamates acrylics, textile, wood and music. Talk to us about your experiences in mixed media art.
EV: I am attracted to use wood with fabric, its warmth and the grain in the wood is so fascinating. The grain and thread go together very well and handling the warmth of wood is pleasurable. In the late 70s and 80s, I didn’t have much time to do art work. I secured my job in the museum, I was really quite busy, totally absorbed in teaching and being with the children. It’s only when I went back to do my post-graduation in the early 90s, that’s when I started to do more work in mixed media. I started to use acrylic paint with fabric, I left museum in 97… then on, up to now I have experimented with mixed media a lot.
I love to work the fabric with threads first, and then rework it with acrylic paint. Personally the embroidery is part of the process of creating with the needle and then changing it with the paint, being careful not to lose the piece. It is a tricky process and I have lost and recycled work many times. It is also about nothing being permanent, taking risks and constant change!
My decade old practice in playing the Sitar has enriched my art practice. From a small frightened child at the piano (the piano teacher struck my fingers, if I made a mistake), I am amazed at how delightfully I can recognize raags now—I had no idea what Bhairavi was, Malkauns, Yaman... these are all the raags that I‘ve been playing. And I’ve also found, that I enjoy listening to the raag when I am painting. I remember I did a painting when listening to Bhimpalasi, the afternoon raag. This raag is beautifully coded in the painting. Even my Sitar teacher (the incredible Chhote Rahimat Khan) said…haa, this is Bhimpalasi! So yes, music has become a very important part of my art journey.
JS: Throw some light on the ‘inner processes’, the psychological meanderings of an artist at work.
EV: My paintings have evolved intuitively in a creative response to images in India. Some of the palaces in Rajasthan, the bright Indian light, and the rich embroidered textiles, these have had a profound effect on the way I use fabric and paint. It’s the contrast, the richness and decay which is all around us in India. This has found expression in my design to distort and change the fabric. Now some times I might have a piece of hand-stitchery which I have spent some time working on, but I feel I want to give it new life, remake it. I mix with other materials in such a way to recreate the piece, rework it until it is reinterpreted. I have used various methods for this. Sometimes I will use heat, burn the edges, sometimes mix with paint, combine fabric with handmade paper or use a stiffening agent. At times change can be quite drastic. I have completely lost pieces of work, but what does it matter, I start again. Gandhi said, “All true art helps the soul to realise its inner self.” This has got something to do with inner process of working with feelings, the resistance inside, working through that and purifying one’s feelings. I don’t want to have agitated, disturbed feelings. I want to be free from them. I want to create something beautiful, and this process of creating beauty, makes better something within the self. When I work with students, I endeavour to guide them to do this inner work, which is most important.
JS: How did ‘Value education’ through art become such a driving force in your life? How can art be used to impart values?
EV: While working at Birmingham museum, I began to feel that there was more to life than just working from 9 to 5. This rushed life was creating an emptiness inside me, it was becoming artificial. I had to look for more. All my energy went into doing my job well at the museum, developing events, working with the children; I wasn’t doing any of my own work in art or music. Then one day I attended ‘Living Values Workshop’, at Oxford. It was organized by Diane Tillman, who was also writing the book ‘Living Values Activity with Young Adults,’ and she invited me to contribute to it. I also met Helen Sayers at the workshop. I followed the model in my value education and meditation workshops at Peace Cottage. Helen developed a training manual using the ancient concept of Ubuntu. Ubuntu is an African practice which means, ‘I am because we are.’ This book was translated to Konkani by late Madhavi Sardessai. These two books have been the inspiration for ‘Living Values’ workshops with children and adults, using innovative ideas in art to communicate values. To communicate the value of ‘peace,’ the children create a mural of peace, staying peaceful while creating it. Their works of art express the value of ‘simplicity’ by working with just a few colours and simple lines.
Living through this pandemic, isn’t the hour upon us, to meticulously and humbly ‘carve the angel in the rock’, becoming walking sculptures of art ourselves?
Jugneeta Sudan is the Art Review Editor at JRLJ.
Photographs are from Eleanor Viegas’s Facebook pages and copyright to her. Used here under fair use principle for non-commercial editorial purposes.