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Artist Exhibitions:
Exhibitions include: Queens
Main Public Library, New York
City Ballet Gallery,
Fingernail demonstration at
Kate's Paperie in Soho and
Indian show in Natural History
Museum.
The New York Public Library,
Donnell Library Center 20 West
53rd Street, New York, N.Y.
and
gave live fingernail embossing
demonstration IAAC's ...
Further Information
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Artist Galleries:
Coming Soon!
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Artist Reviews:
Graphic Design USA magazine,
New York: Suhas Tavkar is a
graphic artist who uses his
fingernails as tools to
produce intricate embossed
designs pressing into the
paper to the appropriate depth
and dimensions.
U&LC magazine, New York: by
Marion Muller
Most of us don't take our
fingernails too ...
Further Information
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Collections:
Mary Morris,
Roosevelt Island, New York,
USA
Mr. Simon Alicea,
New York, New York,
USA
Mr. Shantaram,
Washington DC,
USA...
Further Information
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Commissions:
Mr. Shantaram
Special Landscape design
before he left Bombay
for USA in 1975.
Mary Morris
New York,
Portrait of her Grand Child
...
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Artist Statement for Suhas Tavkar
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Since my childhood I was always thinking that our universe is the God's largest art Gallery with display of big and small moving planets. To see this exhibit during the day the God has created Sunlight and at night God has created Moonlight. So far our living planet earth is one of the nature's greatest and the best art piece, (until we discover another living planet like earth). Our earth's oceans are God's created largest and mysterious aquariums in the living world where you see real natural artistic creations in the light or in the dark deep blue sea.
I was born in 1942 and raised in Mumbai (Bombay), India, and I was exposed to the art of fingernail embossing as a child but started doing fingernail embossing at the age of four. I have learned this unusual and rare fingernail relief art on paper from my late architect father Anant who in turn, learned it from his father and mother as a child (even today I can trace my family names from 1562, means Nakhachitra art has been practiced by my family before that time for generations). Today I can produce the most intricate and truly unique embossed designs and fine calligraphy on paper or thin soft metal. I described my work is a “daunting, irksome and painful” fine art of bas-relief. Each Nakhachitra takes tremendous concentration and precise hand-eye coordination. But the beauty of the relief art is that each work is an original, a one-of-kind piece of artwork. With this technique, if a single line or impression fails to satisfy me, it cannot be undone, it is permanent. In other words, the whole piece has to begin anew.
"NakhaChitra" (fingernail art) is one of the world's rarest, ancient, unique and unknown art form (Nakha means fingernail, Chitra means art and Nakhachitrakar means artist in Sanskrit language of the Hindus) humans ever created at the beginning of the human race. Not a single art history book or museum has given any reference to this original art form which is created by humans with their own fingernails (God-given fingernails as a basic tool to write and draw). I would like to educate people around the world about this unknown forgotten art form, still exists even today. I think humans may have started this art form at the beginning of the human race through etchings on the soft wooden bark or on the large banana or lotus leaves using their fingernails as tool. It takes back at least to the 5th century AD, by which time Kalidasa-the great play writer and poet of the Sanskrit language had mentioned that love letter written by Shakuntala on a lotus leaf with her fingernail in his play “The Recognition of Shakuntala”. This reference shows that the people from India were using Nakha (fingernails) regularly for writing on leaves.
I feel myself as a unique and gifted Nakhachitra artist who can create fine sculptural art without using any artistic material or tools, just my own fingernails. There are billions of people in this world and there are millions of artist creating art using the same art materials, mediums, tools and very similar styles around the world for centuries. My real wish is to show people, especially in the art world, that there is such a thing as “NakhaChitra” the art of fingernail sculpted art is still here and art media should give more exposure to it.
With these natural tools that are literally at one’s own fingertips I believe,
“Every living creature on planet earth is an artist and also a wonderful piece of art”.
“Quality is never an Accident. It is Always the Result of Intelligent Efforts. There must be a will to produce a Superior thing” - by John Ruskin.
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