River, Roads, 2013
Pencil on paper. 50 x 57 cm
Collection of the British Museum.
Rhodes spent her early childhood in the town of Serampore on the Hooghly river close to Kolkata. She continued to return through the 1980s, but after that only twice, in 2012 and 2013. These last visits were very important to her and she made this drawing while there. The work, however, does not – or not straightforwardly – ‘depict’ India.
Each drawing is a cartoon for its painting. Not every drawing stands up as a work in its own right, and none of them has been made with the intention of exhibiting. (It’s only in recent years I’ve started to show drawings.) Some just perform as they were meant to do to make the skeleton for the painting. There is not necessarily a correlation between a drawing that ‘works’ and the success of its related painting. Of course the paintings are much more complex, and once I’m working on one it can depart from its drawing, in composition and in details.