Jain Spirit 2000 03 No 03

SR No.: 528983
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jain Spirit UK
Publisher: UK Young Jains
Publication Year: 2000
Total Pages: 66
Language: English
Classification: Magazine, UK_Jain Spirit, & UK
File Size: 14 MB

Page 35

ART
Caught in the Act (painted with a credit card)
PHOTO: CHANDU SHAH
ART IS LIFE LIFE IS ART
How do you choose the subjects for your paintings? The inspiration comes from what I see in my travels. I travel around the world a lot: I've been to India, Italy, Australia and many other places. The inspiration comes from the landscapes and the peoples of different countries and different cultures. I take photographs and sketches when I'm abroad, and then when I'm back home, I re-create some of those images which have a universal feel. For example, the painting with the horse's head is almost an icon in itself. Many things that come from what I see in landscapes are almost universal images; Celtic stones, rocks that are very solid and stable in what is an unstable society - this is the stability of nature picked out in the work. Would you say that your work is a bridge between East and West? Yes, but the fusion is almost unconscious, because I don't aim to be either. What I create is what is me and what is inside me. I think the West is very strong, from the way I've been brought up, lived here and worked in this country, but the East is also very strongly in me, and this filters through the work unconsciously. It is not a conscious 'I will be an Eastern Painter'- it comes through from the works I see in the East. For example, the frescoes in Sri Lanka, the Ajanta caves, even
the miniature paintings - all those things are pulling through, In November 1999 Nalini Shanthi Cook had a
but not consciously. They're there in the work, for example, in
the strong decorative borders in many of the paintings. major exhibition of her art at the Meghraj Art
How has your art improved the quality of your life? Gallery in London. She talks to Jain Spirit I couldn't live without art. I have a very difficult job, and the
about the inspiration for her work, which art is my release, my way of being in the world, and being embodies the Jain spirit of love for all creation. happy in the world. It reflects love and inner warmth, and that
comes out in the paintings. So art is where you express yourself?
I express myself, but I'm also very at one with myself when I'm How did you become interested in art?
painting. It's a very vigorous and very difficult process, and I was a teacher of art for many years in schools and colleges, can be quite frustrating at times. It's also a very intellectual and then I became a manager of art, and now I'm inspector-I process - there are a lot of technicalities in a painting, which go around schools and colleges and look at the art there have to be right for it to gel into something that can be That's one side of my life-the other side is being a practising inspiring for other people to look at. A painting is as much for artist, which I've always been for as long as I can remember. I other people as it is for me, for them to be able to react and was a sculptor for a while, using all sorts of materials. In the last respond to it, and find that warmth and tranquillity. There's a five years I've come back to painting, but I think a lot of the lot of ugliness in the world, and I don't want to express sculptural influence has come through in the painting because ugliness in my art; I want to express beauty and tranquillity, of the materials I use. I don't use traditional oil, or traditional warmth and love, and I want people to look at the paintings watercolour - I mix all sorts of materials and work them into a and be absorbed by them and feel happy. lot of layers to create a texture. For example, you'll find I notice your style is slightly abstract. paintings which have oil paint, stains, ochre from the earth, The recent paintings have become more surreal, I would say, found materials, photographs, remnants, collage - all sorts of than abstract, because they are images that are recognisable, elements go into the painting to give it layers and depth. that are set in an unreal context. They are not immediately
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Jain Spirit . March - May 2000
Jain Education Interational 2010_03