She urged us to look closely at art, in all its forms and to break it down and experience it
My voyage to the screening rooms of one of the best mass communication colleges in India has been a tumultuous but wonderful one. Every day at Symbiosis Centre for Media & Communication is filled with opportunities to learn more, inculcate new values and gain great insight. Here we are urged to go beyond the drawn map, explore new ideas and understand the greatness of simple wonders.
One of the greatest things I’ve learnt here is appreciation; something I don’t do very often. And specifically appreciation for colour. Ms. Milinda Natu, our Aesthetics and Visual Communication professor was the first to introduce us to such a concept. Since I had previously studied design in my high school, the elements of art were familiar to me. However, I never really experienced colour, just saw it. It would be the sensory equivalent of going to a fine dining restaurant and not enjoying the food, just consuming and appreciating it the way others seem to do. Ms. Natu’s lectures were the ones I enjoyed the most – it felt familiar but, at the same time, completely new.
She urged us to look closely at art, in all its forms and to break it down and experience it. This, I learnt, does not take away the beauty of its totality but makes you view the entirety of the art by appreciating each element. With videos, assignments, fine art etc., she built the love for colour inside me.
Now, I wasn’t just seeing Van Gogh’s sunflowers, I was falling in love with the shade of chrome yellow, Caravaggio’s men were bathed in the shades of the renaissance and Katy Perry’s ‘Dark Horse’ was a burst of ancient-pop hues. This new appreciation for colour heightened my experience of being a viewer and possibly developed in me a great skill for someone who might go on to work with visual media. I learnt that colours were also linked to emotion which now helps me watch, sketch, appreciate art differently. All in all, it made me understand what might have taken place when cinema broke out of its monochromatic state of black and white; a leap into a future of colourful possibilities.
Rhea Fernandez (Batch 2020)
Photo: Rhea Fernandez (Batch 2020)
