Through the porthole by Sheila Malhotra offers the viewers a variety in subject matter which accounts for its success. Different aspects of life on the high seas are depicted with brilliance.
- by R. T. Shahani
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At the Taj Art Gallery this week ending July 31st, we have a unique exhibition by Sheila Malhotra entitled: Through the porthole, which is a pleasurable experience. This is a kind of a show on canvas which you may not have seen for quite some time, for this theme does not appear to have a featured in such a large scale either by the European or our own innovative artists.

In way, where the artist is concerned, this kind of an attempt becomes autobiographical, when a person can recollect all her emotions and feelings in tranquility in the wee hours of the night. Then with the roseate dawn, peer into the life outside the porthole, take up the brush and the knife and get cracking on the easel. The result becomes a peep into the sea life. Thus, when we complain of the long and tedious sea voyage on a merchant marine ship, paintings can be useful way of spending time in a most creative manner.


Says Sheila, painting was not a family occupation. But then her visits to the exhilarating snowy peaks of the Himalayas surrounding Simla, inspired her to do landscapes. After a spell of formal training in fine arts at the Art College of Chandigrah, and encouragement from the paintings of Nandlal Bose and a brush with some of the well-known artists in Calcutta strengthened her desire to paint. While Sheila has given a number of exhibitions already, this is her first solo show in Bombay.

While untitled, an exhibit like Ship sinks, is a visual, vivid account of the sinking of a Panama ship off the coast of Sagar. The work is a combination of a painting and collage, which gives us an insight into the disaster, in which a number of person had perished as reported in a pager like Metropolitan. The stormy and turbulent sea, capable of awesome wreckage, betrays some of the details of the harrowing tragedy.

The use of a bird like an albatross, a long winged white one on the canvas, invariably following white one on the canvas, invariably following a ship on the sea, supposed to be analogous to a petrel – even if not o the stormy variety – is intriguing. Then we have the playful terpsichorean antics of huge mammals like dolphins, with those large beak like spouts, diving in and out of the sea, cavorting on the waves, and having fun, the spirit which has been captured by the ship’s mates.

Another interesting picture is the delineation of the raging sea, with the mighty waves engaged in a mood of wanton destruction. It is a spectacle, which fills you with awe and sends ripples of consternation in the minds of the viewers if they imagine that they were in a small boat to withstand the fury of nature!

Now at the gallery, while the majority of the exhibits have been done in oils with due care. Sheila is particular about the priming of the canvas, which is done with the appropriate used of linseed and turpentine oils to prevent any cracking or flaking of the canvas-don’t miss her works in water colour and gouche, one of the landscapes in particular being a work of impeccable art with the play of light on the horizon, the use of reds and yellows for the effect of the setting sun, the carefree flying birds and a beautiful cloudscape reminiscent of the work of Constable!

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