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It is thirty years
since my first one-person exhibition. Back in the 1970’s, I formed an intention
about my art making: it must operate for me and the viewers at the four levels
at which I seemed to experience — sensory, emotional, thought, and spirit or
consciousness. It would be a positive engagement bringing pleasure to the
senses, it would generate positive feelings and thoughts, and deepen and uplift
the spirit. Only recently I have realized that this is also the heart of the
philosophy and purpose of art in the great Indian tradition.
I have been making
art since childhood. I am, what the art trade calls a ‘self-taught’ artist. My
work has been regarded as being of the spiritual, though it has never been about
religious subjects and I have remained wary of all forms of self-conscious
spirituality, traditional and new age, and the art that is associated with them.
Though I have studied and delighted in Buddhist psychology
and philosophy, contemplation and meditation, my impulse to make art has flowed
freely and has not derived or based itself in any theory, history, group or
movement. Perhaps, this quality of being real, honest and free of art and
religious dogma is the quality that my art has, which is also what we probably
seek and experience in true spirituality. Perhaps it is this that causes people
to see my work as ‘spiritual’.
I tend to work in series that gravitate around my current
concerns and ideas. These change and evolve. Style, material and format are
secondary to the ideas I am stirred by. So far, I have had 25 one-person shows
and have participated in many group shows in India, US and Europe. My work is in
public and private collections around the world. I paint in a wide variety of
mediums, sculpt and make art prints. The major series have been:
1974 Monsoon Skies; 1976 Waves of Sea,
Waves of Mind; 1978 Mountain Ways and Mist of Mind; 1979 Mountains Breathing,
Whispering Mandalas; 1985 Meditation in Landscape;
1989 Fallen God; 1990 Chikai Bardo;
1991-2 Intimations of Transcendence; 1995 Ganga as Grace; 1996 Silent
Witnesses;
1996-97 Insight/Absorption;
1997 Bodhi;
1998 Daan,
2001 Pilgrims’ Path;
2003 Beej;
2006-7 The Seekers;
2010- 2011 The Sangha .
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