About Me

Background

Born in India, I grew up to be an artist before immigrating to Canada in 2005.

I did my training in Art at the prestigious Kala Bhavan, the Faculty of Art in Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, India, – a school founded and shaped by Rabindranath Tagore, the poet of India. During my student days the faculty incorporated creative strides in modern Indian art in crystallizing the meeting points between the western classical as well as modern art styles with the flow of the traditional ways of artistic creation in India.

I had the opportunity of imbibing in the vibrant atmosphere of the faculty as a student in company with teachers of world repute. I was lucky also in being in constant contact with visiting professors and students from China, Japan, Germany, and many other countries in the faculty, which helped me extend my exposure to the great traditions of eastern art beyond the boundaries of India. The unique and very special Bachelor's programme at Kala Bhavan that lasted for five years (1982 – 87) indeed offered several layers of learning opportunities, which I was able to apply and amalgamate in my training for Master’s in Painting from Jiwaji University (2000 – 02). All this has been the basis for my own work up to now, which intertwines the meditative mood of the East with the creative ventures in the West.

Prior to my immigration to Canada, I held several art exhibitions in India while I was engaged in teaching visual art full time at the prestigious Scindia School in Gwalior (1989 -- 2005). In the group projects I used to conduct while teaching art, I often would involve the students in making sculptures, murals and printmaking on top of their drawing and painting activities. In India my work has been exhibited at Birla Academy and Academy of Fine Arts in Calcutta, along with other artists' paintings. A solo exhibition of my work was held at the Visva-Bharati University. Having recently established an art school in Toronto, exhibitions of my paintings have also been arranged at public galleries in and around the city.

Creative Process

I take to the use of ink to delineate images so that forms can combine with and express the formless. The interesting forms that water marks on the damp wall create over a long stretch of time have always attracted me. I recall the earliest aesthetic fascination of my life in staring at the lighted oil lamp in the thick dark night ‘far from the madding crowd,’ where darkness is not dispelled by light, but encases it within its fold.

I tend not to layout a plan for my paintings, as I allow them to blossom spontaneously, on their own. Colour is not prominent there while I do not want to use definite lines in an assertive way. They are just enough to delineate images in the figurative paintings I draw. The colour black has a lot to accomplish as a result, as it carries the sense of infinity, the unmanifest, where the yearnings of life in death are imbedded, paralleling the darkness beyond the reach of the lamp.

To me darkness stands for the peace and grace of reality in as much as it accommodates meditation’s journey into the inner world transporting a person to the phenomenological space where one is by oneself, though never lonely.