Something is Missing/Present
mixed media, Spring 2020
It started with making a red painting for a friend, then a green one for a community art project, and then an orange one for a friend. I knew the colors were connected to our chakras, energy centers in our body as described in yoga. (Read more about chakras.) The paintings inspired me to go back to yoga after a gap of 8-10 years. The first teacher I happened to pick was a chakra expert and gong master. I had never experienced any of this before. The class experienced the vibrations of the gong which the teacher said cleared the chakras. I now saw the colors I had been painting!
Having had my first yoga class in first grade in school in Bombay, India, I realized it was never too late to learn more. I started to explore the power of colors and why we love certain ones sometimes and can’t stand other ones sometimes. As people told me things related to colors—stories of health issues, stories of a favorite uncle, stories of favorite jewelry—I learned that they tell me about what is missing or present in their lives.
I add to the beautiful colors another favorite thing from my past, the beautiful Devanagari script which I learned to write at a young age and then learned to make beautiful in art school. It was only in 2011 that Cecilia Kalish introduced me to water-soluble graphite and it changed my art forever! Hell, it changed me forever!
As I keep working on this project with others and by myself exploring various colors I will add them here, so stay tuned for more!
Photography: The prints of these 3D artworks are made by Yuri Long, a photographer who has collaborated with me on projects before. I really value his eye for detail and his knowledge of process. And we share a love for color too! Check out Yuri’s work here.
Read about the artworks below. You can buy prints of any of them by visiting my shop. Thanks!
Something is Missing/Present: Grounding
Mixed media on canvas
I created this big, bright red painting in April 2020 for a friend who had left an abusive marriage and had moved into a new apartment. Completely unsettled, she said she missed her favorite things—her red things.
I knew red was the color for the root chakra. And I knew many of her favorite things were red and that all of them were “non-essential” and thus in storage.
I went to the studio where an artist had left behind a huge painting he had created for our group show in 2018, Baked Clay/Endless Sky: 5 Years of PAUSE. The lower half of the painting had pages torn out of books hidden under layers of thick brown wall paint. The top half was thinly applied pale blue. But he had not come to pick it up after the show ended years ago. He was an art therapist so I thought it would be perfect to give his painting a new purpose!
I mixed a beautiful red in acrylics and painted the entire canvas. On that I attached a Healing Wand by artist Mary Louise Marino on a swatch of indigo hand-dyed and hand-woven fabric from Laos which she had given me. I looked up the Sanskrit syllable for the root chakra, Lam, and wrote it across the horizon in Sanskrit using water-soluble graphite and gold acrylic paint. Then I asked my friend and calligrapher Sughra Hussainy what letter in Arabic made the same sound. Turns out, its called Lam! So I added Lam in the Arabic script as well. Now it could be read by people who read many languages as the Devanagari script is used to write Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Nepali etc., and the Arabic script is used to write Arabic, Farsi, Dari, etc. See more artworks from the series, below!
UPDATE: June 2024
I made another red painting in the fall of 2023 titled “Kanyadaan, Again.” When I think about this painting now, I think how the color red is the color of marriage in the Bengali Hindu tradition (as opposed to say Green in the Marathi tradition or where the Malayali brides wear white). Red is considered the color of the earth and works when you think how a woman traditionally leaves her first home to go to a new place, that of her husband’s home. You can read more on my blog post here.
I am seeing the photo of me waving the small American flag and the 13 red stripes accompany me, each representing the 13 original colonies. I have thought about how everyone who is American has or has ancestors who left their home to come here or were forced to leave their homes to come here. And how they displaced and decimated those who called this land home and how descendants of those people are now telling of the inequities. And yet the American government gives people Permanent Residency, which thousands crave. Should it feel icky? Yet, here is my struggle to actually leave my own land and accept this land as home. People and Place… I think about it a lot.
BUY Prints:
Grounding, Small, 7.5 x 10, (matted size 11 x 14): $40
Grounding, Big, 12x16, (matted size 16 x 20): $50
Something is Missing/Present: Acceptance
Mixed media on paper, 11.5 h x 11w inches
This painting is part of my Words to Art Spring 2020 project, which I was commissioned to create for Arlington Arts during the 2020 pandemic. A new version of my project Words to Art: Art on the ART Bus, where I had invited bus drivers to give me words they wanted to share with riders and which I made into art to display in the bus, this version connects with the public in a socially distanced way. Through social media we invited the public to share a word describing their feelings on each Monday over 4 weeks from April-May 2020. As they shared words, five Arlington artists picked one that spoke to them and made it into art. The art was then shared through the weekend for all to enjoy. And this is my interpretation of the word “Acceptance.”
I re-used tape from making the red painting I had made the previous day (Grounding). I added to it coats of the lush green color of spring and the heart chakra. It accepted the bumpy tape, which represented suppressed feelings we all dare not express during the unpredictable and terrifying pandemic. Yet, it also was my un-mowed lawn, filled with clover which the bees enjoyed. The syllable for the heart chakra, Yam, which I wrote in Sanskrit using water-soluble graphite and gold seem to have soaked into the earth, nourishing the green. I am okay with that. And as the tape uncurls and I see the red, I know the painting could look different every time I see it. And I am okay with that as well.
Read the full story of the artwork on the blog post here.
BUY Prints:
Acceptance, 7.5 x 7.5, (matted size 12 x 12): $40
Something is Missing/Present: Trust
mixed media on board, 19.5 h x16 w inches
In this optimistic orange painting, I incorporate one of my favorite motifs—a 3-D handmade paper window opening outward. Made for a friend who was finishing the paintings for her MFA thesis project, I remembered how she had found that she loved painting when she was working with the color orange. Yet, when she was not painting, her stomach hurt. I knew her story and how her dream of finishing her education had been interrupted so many times in traumatic ways. How would the story end, she wondered. Can she trust the world, I wondered. Can a color help?
I made an orange of my own, added the open window into the world, and gorgeous clouds because I know that they wash away the old and make room for the new. Orange is the color for the second chakra, which is the sacral chakra. I looked up the the syllable, Vam, and added it in Sanskrit.
BUY Prints:
Trust, 7.5 x 10, (matted size 11 x 14): $40