Where have all the forests gone? Where indeed except in some still nature loving painters' (and of course poets) soft hearts! Well, what the intrepid civilization of the day is doing is bringing nature under its thumb, making it run errands for the master. Man the Master, very clever with his know- how! This being so, the old time contemplation of things as they are is almost out of the question. But even so the heart-worn are prone to mourn the passing of so much that was pure delight, and it is they who read in the works of nature the prime creator.
Vallery Puri has trespassed this same way with her flower-ecstatic compositions. And mind you she is no 'Sunday' painter but rather well conversant with the craft of art. In a sufficient number of her charming evocations she is confidently herself, and no prey to the art fashions of the hour. Look how she is absorbed in the visible attributes of colour, line, mass, texture and in the part they play in the rhythm of her pictures. Subtleties of colour and shapes that are beyond the scope of words to convey are the currency of the painters' idiom. That inner urgency of rhythm and mood demands of the artist the vision to select her equivalents from among the infinite variety of nature's visible resources. Hence her need to gather her observations to the moving tension of her brush or what other implement.
The response set up in her on what she sees immediately undergoes the discipline of the material implements of her practice. So that while like all art practitioners she has perforce got to prune, expand or deepen her art still further, she is certainly right.
If mankind's rapport with nature comes to a close, the human heart will stop for sure. Though, of course, the machine in its new metallic body may go on ticking deafeningly.
Keshav Malik