Introduction to my work
My paintings evoke harmony responding to the mere stringency in culture, tradition and practice, but not against in seeking the pedigree for my visual language. I paint the trancelike paintings as perplexing and enigmatic as, typical in their richness, with astounding mediums and delicate shifts from the real to the fantastic, as if I love exploring the subconscious, prospecting for trinkets that enthuse a sense of harmony between real and unreal.
My affinity with art started predictably, as I was a part of theatre for a long time, and I joined in I.K.S. University, Khairagarh. During this period, I underwent various kinds of academic practices exploring varied kinds of mediums, though printmaking was my specialized area. The experienced faculty and constant interaction with other eminent/efficient teachers facilitated me to nurture my insights. As ‘form’ predominated throughout my under graduation whereby an obvious interest was to depict human figures, I used subtle theatricality and dramatic light to create certain mood in my visual arena. Certainly, the experience that I acquired from theatre activities made an impact over my visual language. Thus, narratives became chief mode of expression.
I build my “forms” instinctively, deal with the blank canvas, I first decide what the background should be, and then fill it with events taken from my experiences or from whatever I hear and read happening around me. Perhaps this is why my pictures are fundamentally assemblages of disparate elements, with one area, painted flatly and tightly, like a silhouette, and the next rendered not only in a traditional volumetric ornamentation but in a painterly manner, with particular care to demonstrate slight changes in light and tone. I believe in painterly approach, where the figure plays a significant role as a cultural signifier, symbolic structure and an encrusted thing that holds meaning. Because of the confusion in art, the feelings of being deceived by modern art, the work you will view here has grown in a reverse evolution for me. It is more than necessary to follow one's own lines, roots and form a link in the chain of a great artistic tradition based on traditional values and techniques, authenticity and motivation.
I deliberately made an effort to rejuvenate the very narrative quality combining with representational/metaphoric idiom. However, narrativity encloses the circumstances/episodes around us through its translation into visual vocabulary in order to enhance one’s idiom. Hence, my work ambiguously creates multiple meanings, yet complex in them, shows my nostalgic insight. The protagonist is repeatedly shown to enrich my composition, which too help in generating multiple meanings.
The source of subject matter comes from world around me particularly the sensitive multifarious human attachments. What makes my art captivating is the ability to bring out a ‘haunting’, often tormented essence in my forms. Right from my childhood, drawing and painting have always been mediums of expressing my agony. Often my art expresses satire/humor and social hypersensitivity as well. At a time when most will look and move on, I notice and it gets affected. What makes me so individual is that my language is so ‘personal’ and yet it is so often ‘bursting with politics’. Subsequently, I made an attempt to represent their different dynamics in dissimilar contexts. At this juncture, my stay in Baroda helped me understanding the cultural complexities of cosmopolitan society and thus my most recent works replicate them in a symbolic mode. I confess that I was increasingly occupied with the fantasies and inventions of my imagination and with the critical and satirical observations of mankind. As a result, during this time, I gradually developed a new, bold, free style similar to caricature.
Staying and working in a place like Baroda stimulated me to look at various trends and thought faculties in art practice. I keenly observe popular imageries, in which hidden meanings and various kinds of veiled messages are infused. So I made an attempt to incorporate some significant ‘images’ as part of my visual vocabulary. For instance, The Shootings of May Third, where, Goya, a Romanticist from Spain gives us an outstanding ‘paradigm’ of a person’s way of expressing himself and what he expresses being influenced by the experiences he has had and what is going on around him. That experience helped him become a keen observer of human behavior. Indisputably, I realized that The Shootings of May Third, 1808, is an excellent example of how the experiences a person has in his life and the events that are happening around him can influence the way he expresses himself. I deliberately used reverse image of the painting as a tapestry design on the shirt of one of my protagonists.
At this juncture, I personally feel that an artist needs to express his or her own turmoil through his or her work of art and bring them to the larger arena people. He should use this thought provoking medium just as ‘journalism’ but the aesthetical approach should be given first priority. In this regard, I would like to continue my exploration reading the possibilities of doing so and using new mediums such as popular images, wood-cut, silk screen and acrylic colors to enrich painting as a most appropriate medium to touch the sensibilities of human society.
My affinity with art started predictably, as I was a part of theatre for a long time, and I joined in I.K.S. University, Khairagarh. During this period, I underwent various kinds of academic practices exploring varied kinds of mediums, though printmaking was my specialized area. The experienced faculty and constant interaction with other eminent/efficient teachers facilitated me to nurture my insights. As ‘form’ predominated throughout my under graduation whereby an obvious interest was to depict human figures, I used subtle theatricality and dramatic light to create certain mood in my visual arena. Certainly, the experience that I acquired from theatre activities made an impact over my visual language. Thus, narratives became chief mode of expression.
I build my “forms” instinctively, deal with the blank canvas, I first decide what the background should be, and then fill it with events taken from my experiences or from whatever I hear and read happening around me. Perhaps this is why my pictures are fundamentally assemblages of disparate elements, with one area, painted flatly and tightly, like a silhouette, and the next rendered not only in a traditional volumetric ornamentation but in a painterly manner, with particular care to demonstrate slight changes in light and tone. I believe in painterly approach, where the figure plays a significant role as a cultural signifier, symbolic structure and an encrusted thing that holds meaning. Because of the confusion in art, the feelings of being deceived by modern art, the work you will view here has grown in a reverse evolution for me. It is more than necessary to follow one's own lines, roots and form a link in the chain of a great artistic tradition based on traditional values and techniques, authenticity and motivation.
I deliberately made an effort to rejuvenate the very narrative quality combining with representational/metaphoric idiom. However, narrativity encloses the circumstances/episodes around us through its translation into visual vocabulary in order to enhance one’s idiom. Hence, my work ambiguously creates multiple meanings, yet complex in them, shows my nostalgic insight. The protagonist is repeatedly shown to enrich my composition, which too help in generating multiple meanings.
The source of subject matter comes from world around me particularly the sensitive multifarious human attachments. What makes my art captivating is the ability to bring out a ‘haunting’, often tormented essence in my forms. Right from my childhood, drawing and painting have always been mediums of expressing my agony. Often my art expresses satire/humor and social hypersensitivity as well. At a time when most will look and move on, I notice and it gets affected. What makes me so individual is that my language is so ‘personal’ and yet it is so often ‘bursting with politics’. Subsequently, I made an attempt to represent their different dynamics in dissimilar contexts. At this juncture, my stay in Baroda helped me understanding the cultural complexities of cosmopolitan society and thus my most recent works replicate them in a symbolic mode. I confess that I was increasingly occupied with the fantasies and inventions of my imagination and with the critical and satirical observations of mankind. As a result, during this time, I gradually developed a new, bold, free style similar to caricature.
Staying and working in a place like Baroda stimulated me to look at various trends and thought faculties in art practice. I keenly observe popular imageries, in which hidden meanings and various kinds of veiled messages are infused. So I made an attempt to incorporate some significant ‘images’ as part of my visual vocabulary. For instance, The Shootings of May Third, where, Goya, a Romanticist from Spain gives us an outstanding ‘paradigm’ of a person’s way of expressing himself and what he expresses being influenced by the experiences he has had and what is going on around him. That experience helped him become a keen observer of human behavior. Indisputably, I realized that The Shootings of May Third, 1808, is an excellent example of how the experiences a person has in his life and the events that are happening around him can influence the way he expresses himself. I deliberately used reverse image of the painting as a tapestry design on the shirt of one of my protagonists.
At this juncture, I personally feel that an artist needs to express his or her own turmoil through his or her work of art and bring them to the larger arena people. He should use this thought provoking medium just as ‘journalism’ but the aesthetical approach should be given first priority. In this regard, I would like to continue my exploration reading the possibilities of doing so and using new mediums such as popular images, wood-cut, silk screen and acrylic colors to enrich painting as a most appropriate medium to touch the sensibilities of human society.
