Art: Where is it born?

Painting

Scenes that an artist dreams of, reads about or lives through are all things that make canvasses come alive. For many, music is a major source of inspiration, as is the case for Zoheb Mashiur. 
“I always free draw to music,” he says. “I rarely think or plan.”

Om's “Bhima's Theme” is what inspired one of Zoheb's paintings – a song that resonates with the might of the demigod of the epic Mahabharat through its booming bass rumble. Any painting based on “Bhima's Theme” would therefore have to represent strength.

Zoheb begins with doodling musculature figures. Unsatisfied with the results, he then pays attention to the lyrics –
 
Inbreathe. A truant mind reclaimed.
Liberates.
Revolts through involution rise.

It's mostly nonsensical chants about light, meditation, vigilance; words that feel hypnotic and nearly comprehensible but defy actual explanation. And so he gets the idea for eyes, light and sunlight; he starts drawing a lion of sorts. 

In keeping with the multi-headedness that he relates with Hindu mythology, he goes for a conjoined lion-head to achieve a two-eyed effect. He adds a lot of spiral brushwork and suggestions of jewelled light. And, when it feels right, he stops. 

Fiction

For fiction writer Shuprovo Arko, music and movies are the breeding grounds for ideas. 

“In most movies, the writers finish the script and hand it over to the composers who create scores to accompany the story. These scores control the rhythm of the scenes: the rush of the action scenes, the suspense of the horror ones, the bittersweet feeling of the ending. These scores are where I get inspiration for my fiction. I write with the music.”

Arko breaks it down to the basics – with all the complex narratives and elaborate dialogues, what all stories talk about is love, hate and other matters of the heart. It's all about writing down emotions. 

On listening to a fluid piece of music, Arko imagines vague scenes with nondescript characters and blurry dialogues. And that's enough to build a story around it. 

“If a person captures the emotion and writes to the tempo of good music, they could write a story about socks and it'd still be brilliant. It's all anyone needs in my opinion,” he shares. 

Music

If words and melodies inspire painting, and music inspires fiction, what inspires music?

“Lights and sounds,” shares Fahad Zaman. Looking at lights on billboards and in stores, he tries to derive a sequence from the patterns. And then he mixes in audio samples of sounds he picks up from around him.

“When I was travelling from Bashundhara to Banani a year back, I kept my cell phone's recording on. Then I used the recordings and turned them into a beat,” he explains. 

Poems without words, pictures painted with the brushstrokes of language, stories told through the melody of a few minutes – art is a lot of things. On taking a step back, we realise that it's life that inspires art. And as a famous guy once said, 

“All art is but imitation of nature.” 

Sarah Anjum Bari is a ravisher of caffeine and prose, with a heart that lives in Parisian cafes. Reality checks to be sent in at s.anjumbari@gmail.com.