Monday, February 07, 2000
Time is essence of his art
Loveland painter struggles to find audience for his risky, structured scenes of infinity
BY OWEN FINDSEN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
India native Baldwin Newton displays a few of his paintings in his Loveland apartment.
(Michael E. Keating photo)
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In his small apartment in Loveland, Baldwin Newton is trying to explain the 20th century.
“It's wheels within wheels. The roller coaster of the 20th century ... its difficulties and achievements ... my problem is that I am depicting the 20th century and taking it into centuries to come.”
Mr. Newton is a painter. His subject is the landscape of time. However vast the theme, it is a problem he has under control. His paintings are filled with swirling and twisting shapes that imply a time and space beyond the Earth.
His real problem is getting people to see what he has accomplished. It's a common problem with artists. Dealers aren't interested in work that's different. It's too risky. They prefer artwork that looks familiar.
Now the 64-year-old artist has an exhibition at the Arts Consortium in West End, where his fascinating ideas can be seen in depth.
“My problem is not making the art. It is trying to get someone to look at my art and see what I am doing,” he says.
Mr. Newton is from northern India. His family is Anglo-Indian, from the time when India was part of the British Empire. When India gained independence in 1947, “most Anglo-Indians left and went to England, but my family stayed,” he says.
He studied at the Academy of Fine Art in Delhi and taught painting in India for 30 years before coming to the United States 13 years ago. His hope was to teach art in America, but the death of his wife and other family problems shattered his plans and left him broke.
“I had to pick up a job,” he said.
He works as a decorative artist for New Creative Enterprises during the day and paints at night.
“I am searching for time to paint, but it is not easy. I am getting old. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with an idea to paint, but sometimes my body won't let me. I get so tired.”
Mr. Newton was painting realistic landscapes in India when he got a bad review in a newspaper from a critic that said he was not getting to the heart of the matter.
“I was so discouraged. Then I passed a baker's shop and saw a baker decorating a cake. I thought, if he can do that, so can I, so I got an ordinary funnel and started pouring paint onto canvas through the funnel.
“I couldn't sleep. I kept visualizing the cake. I wanted to create something new. I want to be different from the others. I wanted to create new frontiers. If man can reach the moon and Mars why can't my imagination go there?”
Art totally original
It took eight years before Mr. Newton, whose painting arm is badly disabled from a childhood injury, was confidant that his art was totally original.
“In American, every second or third person is a painter, a Sunday painter, a Monday painter, a Tuesday painter. I like to be different from the others. If I put my paintings among a thousand paintings and don't sign my name, you will see that it is my work because it reflects me.”
The funnel didn't last long, but it led him to a new way to make paintings.
Now, using a small brush and acrylics in the dark hours of the night, Mr. Newton methodically constructs paintings that appear to be woven in space.
Layer is added upon layer, burnished, scraped and painted again with transparent, jewel-like colors. The result is a tension-filled network that spreads across the canvas like a Jackson Pollock drip painting. The difference is Mr. Newton's work is constructed with careful detail instead of Pollock's random splashes.
“I was walking in a woods and I saw a bug crawl into a dried up nutshell,” he says pointing to a painting. “That is this one I call "Life in a Nutshell.' This one has bugs on a leaf. It is called "In the Lap of Nature.' Nature is feeding them.”
Shapes grab viewer
He has no formal studio. He paints in the kitchen, the spare bedroom — everywhere in his small apartment. Sometimes, when another apartment in the building is empty, he can take his paintings there and line them up along the walls to study them.
Looking at the paintings one sees shapes like snails, worms, cowrie shells; tentacles and ganglia; nebulas and galaxies: things that are at the same time inorganic and organic, simultaneous miniscule and massive. Thin tread-like lines spread through the surfaces.
The art is deep, filled with mystery. They pull you in and don't easily release you to explore the next canvas. The rich colors are indescribable.
The concept behind the paintings is universal: to evoke images that express the history of the past century through abstract means.
For Mr. Newton, who is a Christian, there is nothing of Indian tradition in his art. But to a Westerner, there is the essence of India. Time, in these works, is an endless cycle, not the Western concept of time that progresses from past to future.
Mr. Baldwin's paintings have been exhibited in India, Great Britain and throughout the United States in invitational exhibitions. He often wins top prizes in these shows, but competitions do not lead to careers. Mr. Newton creates his cosmic art for a audience that is yet to discover it.
“I'm not worried,” he says, “because the more difficult it gets the better I paint.”
Baldwin Newton's paintings are at the Arts Consortium, 1515 Linn St., West End, through March 5. Gallery hours are 1 to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 1 to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday. 381-0645.
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