untitled

  Pen and Ink

Drawing inspiration from the forest nearby her home and indigenous traditions of Indian traditional iconography, Gouri creates a magical, fantasy world where real and imagined chimeric creatures sit around or roam uninhibitedly, sometimes peeking through, sometimes camouflaged within the foliage, and at other times, asserting distinctive identities. The artist’s initial training and practice as a printmaker – she completed her MFA from Sarojini Naidu School of Art, Hyderabad, along with a Drawing Master’s course – becomes clearly evident in her skilled compositions. While she borrows from nature, rural and urban settings, and iconography, what makes her work compelling and unique is that in each of her works there is a close and harmonious intermingling and interconnectedness of the creatures and human figures with the landscape settings. In both her mutely colored, mixed media works and black-and-white and sepia-toned art, Vemula makes effective use of negative spaces to bring in an element of drama to these serene surroundings, thereby allowing relief to viewers from the overpowering detailing.