Forest Earth-II

  Watercolour on Paper.

Working with common themes such as time, isolation, and transition, I am interested in the fragility of relationships and people’s awkwardness in trying to coexist and relate to one another. To that end I create miniature like detailing to serve as evolving still life’s from which I paint detailed narrative paintings. For my most recent series of paintings I built a diorama of a fictional rural landscape and gradually developed it into farmland and ultimately, a town. Beginning with an square of Styrofoam, I carved mountains, valleys, rivers and ponds, and propagated a verdant landscape with of wire and foam trees. My practice is vastly influenced and marked by my shift from Odisha to Delhi and personal encounter with the ever- changing landscape, evident in my recording of minute details – both real and imagined. Fusing stylistic elements drawn from miniature paintings and the traditional Patta paintings. The idea portrayed the value of image reading and sense of diversity between Machine and urban picture. The Machine is the main part for the people in the city. It carried the aesthetic, beauty and ugliness of science. In the painting it gives the scene of manmade clouds and deserves the costume of urban. I consider myself to be more from a literature and drama background rather than fine art; as such, I have a long list of ideas and concepts as an artist, artisan, writer and movie maker which in turn allows me to provide an alternative way of understanding life around me. It also widens my interest in processes and approaches in contemporary art practice. As we go further into this modern technological age, we have become more and more like machines because when we do something, we don’t harbor any particular emotions or attachments with the activity. We just go on and on doing it without looking into its extended humanitarian aspects. Practice also elaborates my complex vision of simple images where characters from past comes in and create a drama. Sometimes they posit relevant questions on our present society and the issues concerning us. Time machine where the memories of the past and the experience of present come together.