Kathmandu:

For the last three months the art students of Kathmandu University have been able to give free wings to their abstract imaginations. With Montserrat Clausells i Verges here to give them the necessary push, their imaginary skills have known no bounds.

Clausells i Verges is here on the Elsa Peretti Foundation’s grant and she uses a special technique to help her students find that abstract spot in their palette and create something from it.

She put on some music and leaves it to the students to interpret it in their own way. She encourages her students to paint whatever that particular music inspires them to paint or draw.

Clausells i Verges, a graduate in Information Sciences, started her career in art after the 80’s. She straddles a teaching job and working for social issues besides career in art. “An artist can not earn his livelihood by painting only,” she says justifying her other professions.

She was born into and grew up in a family devoted to arts, but she decided on a career

in art relatively late. She joined an art school in London, which helped her discover the essence of realism and figurative painting.

Her works are mostly about interior landscapes, which are often empty spaces, rarely furnished. There are no human or any other living beings in her paintings, which are evocative of tranquillity and meditative mood.

These spaces in her painting might or might not exist in the world but it feels familiar. “One can identify the space with one’s own space, a common place we live in or thought about,” she says.

And she encourages her students to identify this space.

About the Nepali students here she says, “Students here take their study as a serious task, which is really good. They grasp whatever is taught quickly.”

To her, painting is a passion and a lifeline. It is her language to portray the emotions and the world she has understood. And she is here to share this passion with the students.