Gitanjali 103

Gitanjali is a book of poems by the revered Indian literary genius Rabindranath Tagore (18611941). In 1913 Tagore received the Nobel Prize for Literature for this masterpiece, consisting of 103 poems or song offerings (the translation from Bengali of the word gitanjali). The poems deeply and beautifully describe the human search for the eternal and inspired my paintings for this book.
To produce the Gitanjali project I attempted to submerge myself in Tagores world. I read material from all areas of his diverse and creative career. The paintings are not meant to be illustrations of the verses themselves, but images inspired by the poetry and my understanding of the creative mind behind them. This understanding is then merged with my own sense of aesthetics and my always-evolving painting technique.

Mark W. McGinnis