Untitled 6

About Artist

Art for me is food for the soul. It encompasses my whole being, saturates the soul. Art inspires, illuminates, encourages, surprises, excites, provokes, calms, elevates emotionally as well as spiritually and connects soul to soul. On seeing my art, if the viewer experiences even one of these emotions, then we connect soul to soul. As an artist the process of creating the artwork is important to me but I refuse to accept the limitations imposed by rules. I want to work in all styles, mediums and delve through many subjects and then draw conclusions at my own pace. I started to “paint” with the ball point pen. I have found that the simple ball pen with its fine line has a huge potential in allowing the artist to express his or her thoughts and emotions. Unlike painting with brush, where a single stroke can cover a large area with color, pen lines are very thin and there is a sense of creation at every stroke. It is very challenging to create innumerable tones by combining the limited available colors in ball point pens. I need to draw millions of lines to make my painting come alive! Standing for a long time with a bad posture while making my ballpoint pen drawings, I started having severe back pain. It worsened as time passed by, may be because of lifting of heavy weight of parcels of paintings during travelling for my exhibitions. Soon I had to take complete bed rest and some pain killer treatment. In search for a permanent cure without medicines, I came accross a healing program based on Yoga and meditation. These exercises and meditation required me to focus my attention on the pain by going deep inside to the area where I felt the actual pain and soon I started having some visualizations filled with vibrant energy. I felt that there is so much going on inside the body that the urge to look outside for inspiration became meaningless for me. This made me paint a few canvases just in my imagination. When the back pain reduced and I started painting again, my very first work was an abstract of a new style. I did not plan or draw anything to begin with. I did not use a palette. Just inspired by a certain color, I poured it directly on the canvas. I used large size brushes, a special plastic tool with a zigzag edge that I made, a roller to spread the color. When I painted, I was just a third person watching it happen. I enjoyed the process of creation. As of now, I feel that I have just found something amazing and I feel an urgency to explore it further. I am using acrylic colors for my abstracts. I also work with Oil colors. In oils, I love the dry brush technique. It allows me to create expressive textures with so much ease. My subject matter deals with landscapes, portraits, abstracts as well as stylizations. Light plays a very important role in creating the required drama to draw the viewer in to my world. It could be a rustic village home or then dancing crops against a dramatic skyline. Towering boulders take my breath away. I paint with the motive that I finally achieve the result I initially have in my mind. Simple subject matter, good composition, boldness of forms, delicate line work and a little dramatization play a key role in the impact, my art has on the viewer. In 1979 I passed out with a G.D.Art in Applied Arts from Abhinav Kala Vidyalay, Pune, India. For about 27 years I worked in the field of Communication Design and applied my creative talent in rendering a variety of art works for a number of clients which included Graphic design in all its variety. After years of designing for varied people I came to the conclusion that I needed an outlet that would help me realize my creative potential in a more satisfying way. Art for me like for many other people became the most meaningful part of life and a source of much fun and relaxation. I hope that my paintings serve as a channel of expression and help the viewer understand my inner conflicts, fears, and tensions as well as my aspirations, hopes, and ideals. In the coming years I hope to venture in to every aspect of art and explore all its dimensions. I have just made a small beginning and I'm hoping that the average viewer in the gallery comes out feeling that he has seen something that provokes a reaction. Apart from the oil and acrylic medium, I also make fine artworks using color ball point pens as my medium. I create full color effects and full scale gradation of tone by combining the fine lines within the limited range of colors available using cross hatching and various other rendering techniques. I work with a range of subjects. I like to work in both realistic and abrstact styles.