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Artist Statement for Meenal Chaudhari
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my academic background is in psychology, i started exploring painting and great artists during college i.e. in the 1980s. i was administering the rorschach ink-blot test and my friend's response to a card was that it looked like a painting by toulouse-lautrec and i didn't know what that looked like. so he brought over a thick, fat book on art and showed me.
once i entered this world i just went headlong on. i started out, as most other artists i suppose, with a lot of sketching and copies of the great masters. as i was training in psychology at the time and participating in several self-awareness/therapy workshops, i was especially fascinated by the connection between the inner world of the artist and their paintings.
personally, my collective consciousness is steeped in indian mythology, lore, tradition, and philosophy. in the process of formal education i imbibed the western rationalist-scientific approach as also a very individualistic mode of thinking. but as i travelled deeper in psychology i was led again to meditation and the mystical practices. i now firmly believe that investigation into inner worlds is of paramount significance. my inner journeys have deepened considerably with the practice of yoga, meditation, research in consciousness, rebirthing, several other techniques of self-awareness and of course intuition. my art expresses some of these explorations.
over the years, my interest in art has extended to an active participation in theater, student films, contemporary dance-movement, writing, web-designing, appreciating world cinema and even embraces how i dress and what my home looks and feels like!
painting and digital art became a full time activity with the onset of the new millennium i.e. Jan 2000. i bought a few canvases and some acrylic paints and jumped right into it. my first canvas was inspired by the mountain arunachalam. i had just heard of it and was reading a book on ramana maharishi and his discourse on advaita philosophy. the mountain is said to have the energy of shiva and is regarded as the fire mountain. ( it houses a temple dedicated to the fire element.) anyhow as i was reading i was feeling the energy of this mountain and so started sketching it and then putting it on canvas.
my first painting 'lingarms' was created thus. shiva has always evoked its counterpart shakti and the two are as yin-yang to me. so i play with this and with being able to view them vertically and horizontally and i play with colours, and with seeing lingums where the arms are and yonis where the laps are etc. so i enjoyed looking at them from different angles and yet seeing their essential form (kind of a reverse on cubism?). i paint so i can put across these incredible concepts that are so difficult, if not impossible, to articulate!
i work on the principles of essence, wonder, simplicity, innocence, vibrancy and serenity. there is something very 'western' about my art, as about me. and something that is very indian too. i love this mix. i love the exchange between the two cultures, and the dialogue between these two aspects of my personality. i believe, art has the capacity to present radically different, even opposing points of view and yet to integrate them. i attempt to do the same and some of the contradictions i deal with are the agnostic and the believer, the analytical and the holistic, the romantic and the cynic, the sensual and the spiritual, the individualistic and the universal .
almost all my digital art is totally spontaneous. i do not approach the process of creation with any preconcieved notions, but let the mouse flow as a brush. i am primarily a colorist. ideas may emerge as the work progresses. more often than not colours tell their own story. there is a lot of experimentation in the printing too.
on canvas i am a little more calculated. often, but not always, i work out the motif in drawings. i have refrained from confining myself to a singular subject/form of expression, though from time to time i have worked on certain themes. I see art as a celebration of life - in all its colours. a rejoicing in all its experiences, ideas, moods, feelings, sensations, power-equations, romantic notions, spiritual aspirations et. al. my art reflects all the different aspects of my personality. as also the deeper dimensions of the inner world in its connection with the universal creative force.
essentially i paint because it is such fun and because i feel warmly towards it.
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