Petalo

Oil on Canvas

Will I ever tire of painting flowers? The answer is NO. I made this with a very small palette. My mind is in  a turmoil. The gruesome rape that occurred in Delhi (India), a few days ago has put a pall of gloom over the Christmas and New Year Season. I dedicate this white flower to the victim who lies in the ICU, fighting for her life.May she recover soon. 

Chloris

I have been very influenced by a play I watched a few months back. It's called 'Stories in a song', produced by Shuba Mudgal and presented by Sunil Shanbag. I was so mesmerised by the songs in the play, that I went to watch the play all over again, for a second time. One of the songs which the chief protagonist sings is 'Aan baan'.
I would play the song over and over in my mind, but unfortunately the music of the play is not released as an album and is not available. But I happened to get the song, which was originally sung by Gauhar Jaan, which was exactly as depicted in the play. The play enacts an episode of how Gauhar Jaan a classical singer from yore, recorded this very song for the first time on Gramophone records.I found the entire episode mentioned in wikipedia and also her original song onyoutube. Ketaki Thatte, the chief protagonist who sings this song in the play does a fabulous job and sounds just like the original Gauhar (as heard in the original recording)!I recommend this play to all music connoissieurs!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm9SE1J78wo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauhar_Jaan

The Colour Series

The Colour series put together:

Yellow

A4 Size oil on Canvas with palette knives

Fuschia

A4 Size Oil on Canvas with palette knives

Fuschia

Oil on canvas with palette knives

A4 Size

This was painted about two months back.  Another painting of flowers with some fruits at the corner!This was done as an extension to 'Yellow'. I thought I'd do one or two more, but I realised that am not as imaginative when it comes to fruits as I am with flowers.This is not a colour off my regular palette but then who says anything is regular in art? The mosr regular part of art is that it is irregular and that suits me so fine! I am the boss on the canvas !

I am planning to play with some mild colours as I have been accused of using too much reds and chromes in my works. the only thing is I don't know what i'm going to do with all the red tubes I have!!!!

India Art Festival

I went for a quick half an hour to the India Art Festival, which was held on MMRDA grounds in Mumbai. It was like a bombardment of art, with all big and small artists from all over India putting up stalls with their artwork. Most artists shared stalls with one or two others . There were artworks from other parts of the world too, put up by some international galleries.

I spotted the ever graceful Lalita Lajmi and was lucky to spend some time with her. She had two stalls  showcased with her print-work art, hosted by a gallery. Her art always inspires me!

I searched desperately in the chaos and art clutter for Damien Hirst's works, which were supposed to be displayed there ( newspapers said so!). All I saw was a huge blow-up of his famous skull sculpture! I might have missed any other installation of his, even if it was there. It was all a zig-zag of stalls and artwork and one had to actually find the way around amidst the colourful chaos!

Just near the entrance was this huge ( about 10 feet) installation of a skull made by artist Sukanta Panigrahy. Well , we seemed to have our very own Hirst! 

I found it fascinating, as it was made of e- waste. The entire thing was made of old CDs, mother-boards, mouses, wires and keyboards!The teeth were cleverly made of computer mouses! If that was not enough, it emitted smoke and some weird sci-fi hiss along with the smoke, every 5 mins! This artist is also famous for making the much noticed black horse Installation in the last Kala Ghoda  festival! By the way, he seems to be a skull specialist, as there were two more skull installations made by him!  

All in all, it was an interesting experience, though I couldn't help feeling that it was too much art and too many artists! I guess this would have been a great platform for building bridges and connecting with galleries and fellow artists!