I believe I am a born artist. I started drawing at the age of five and painting by seven. My real inspiration came at the age of nine when I started recreating the Baroque art of Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Vermeer for my family in my hometown Moga in Punjab. Soon, I developed my own style and technique, paintings on textiles which added a surrealistic element to my art. My family was very supportive and helped me to inculcate my passion for art further and it was under the guidance of Mr.Rameshwar Broota at the Triveni Kala Sangam in Delhi that I learned the intricacies of visual art, eventually leading to a better understanding and development of my style.
I create art on textiles. My artworks portray a journey narrated by the textiles, a time trip of characters inhabiting the feel and medium of the fabric. Textiles have been a part of human society since prehistoric times and will be evolving with us as time goes by. My quest is to highlight the possible concomitance amongst the humans and the textiles, the convergence of the inanimate and the animate, the inorganic, and the organic, the known and the unknown. The fabrics in my art take human form to reflect human values, impressions of gender equality, the abstraction of passion, expressions of poverty, etc. I excessively use natural pigments from the flora diversity, at times handpicked from my neighborhood to create patterns and forms in my art.
Fashion is an ever-evolving industry. Having gone through the course, opened a new creative world for me as an artist. The patterns, the textures, the materials used, the pallets, all keep expanding and maturing each day, helping the productive pursuits and multiplying the features of my art constantly. Important aspects of Fashion design that I incorporated in my art are attention to detail and working with diversity on my canvas. I worked with indigenous artisans of India to learn new abilities like Punjab’s Phulkari, Lucknow’s Chikankari, Bengal’s Nakshi Kantha, Bagru hand block printing technique in Rajasthan, and Pipli appliqué work from Odisha and other such traditional styles. Today, I try to integrate these skills into my artistry for I believe that creativity knows no bounds.
Glimpses of Neverland is an ode to Romanticism. It was a passionate feminine metaphor for eternal childhood, immortal motherhood, and an escapist wife. It was an intriguing experiment with colors, shapes, textures, and patterns. It was the first time when I had introduced memories as objects and forms as subjects to recreate the innocence of fairy tales with sardonic undertones that posed strange questions. The paintings emphasized more on the gestures, light, and compositions, creating an ingenious figment of my imagination. By God’s grace, the show was appreciated and well-received, encouraging me, and paving my way further into experimentation in the world of art.
I believe the color in its simplest form, when added to a texture or an object, can invoke a complex human feeling. For example, I am currently doing an international project inspired by the art of Expressionism in which I’m trying to create a transforming painting with sunlight and its spectrum falling on textiles. No paint is used in these paintings. The spectrum keeps changing color at different times of the day, the texture of the textile creates a form for the viewer subjecting varied feelings in the subconscious. The emotions evolve with the color, sometimes with the change in color and sometimes because of the lack of it. From anger to compassion to joy to envy and so forth. In some paintings I add color to the textile which forces the observer to imagine colors that are not there, creating more complex emotions.
I follow a simple process. I control the controllable and create small compositions of drawings with what I wish to achieve. Then with the help of software, I create a few compositions on my computer to review. When I’m happy with the theme, I handpick a textile that perfectly suits the essential elements of the painting. Even before I pick up my brush, I have a clear idea, where the perspectives, the dimensions, the abstractions, the patterns, the form are going to be. I meticulously work to achieve the desired result, but in the procedure, unmistakably every time, the impulse takes over. I get lost in the artwork as it talks to me, guides me, empowers me, in fact completely takes over my artistic instinct. I feel as if I have not created this art but the art has created itself. It’s magical and that is why I love to create art… It’s a beautiful process.
Back in the day, I worked with many mediums to create novelty on my canvas. I tried different techniques with oil, acrylic, and watercolors in order to achieve the desired results, but it was just not happening. I was rejecting and discarding most of my artworks. I kept trying, but the result remained the same, maybe I was trying too hard. Then one fine day, I was lying down in my mother’s lap and playing with the pattern of flowers on the sari that she was wearing. I could feel the warmth, the aroma, the feeling of my mother’s love, and in the exact moment, it occurred to me, if this fabric can evoke such a feeling of love in my heart, maybe it's God’s will to guide me into painting on it. After a few months of research on ‘how can I use oil paint on textiles’, I created my first painting on one of my mother’s discarded sari. It was a masterpiece for my family and a masterstroke for me which still adorns the living room of my parent’s house.
My next solo exhibition is scheduled in Germany, which got delayed due to COVID 19 pandemic. For this show, I have created paintings with pure rust and prehistoric natural dyes on Khadi, juxtaposed with post Impressionistic lenticular design patterns. The show is an ode to Indo-European craftsmanship. Since my last solo show, I have only focussed on my work and worked on many artistic projects and installations. My work plan has centered around inventing artworks about necessary social developments around the world. As an artist, it was the need of the hour for me to grow and diversify my thought process in order to help the creative fringe of the society in articulating a collective will of freedom and virtuous living with a corrected use of tools and technology. My aim is to provoke thought through art.
Whenever I meet contemporary artists, I always try to learn from them. The processes, the techniques, the thoughts, the deliverables… The multi-dimensional approach of today’s artists amazes me and inspires me to learn more and eventually create more art for the world. Karen Nicol, I really admire her diligent and conscientious art of textile design. In fact, I’m working out a new technique to create fabric sculptures motivated by her artistry. My message to young artists is to simply keep learning, keep creating, never fail to experiment but always be on the lookout for God’s will to guide you. Don’t be the next Leonardo Da Vinci, but be the first someone.
