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Artist Statement for Vaishnavi Desai
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Artist Statement: Vaishnavi Desai
My artistic evolution has moved from my engineering degree in Pigment chemistry and
Textile design into the fine arts in graphic design. The art that I primarily work with is
that of abstraction, Mixed media , fabric, Wood and found objects. My favorite artists
who have influenced My expression include Diebenkorn, Frankenthaler, De Kooning,
and Rauschenberg, Judy Pfaff. I am currently exploring with hand – cast paper as well as
hand embossed production.
Nature is such a beautiful thing and the challenge that I am confronted with, as an artist
is to reproduce this beauty and exotic’s and to make it my own. Looking at it through my
Own eyes. Charcoal drawing, printmaking techniques, oil painting and ceramic
sculptures are some of the mediums I have been working with for the past ten years. I am
constantly engaged by the pleasurable act of initiate the natural world and I am currently
Incorporating this influence with my past work. One of my objectives is to learn and
develop new and original techniques through which I can express my ideas further in my
career as an artist. I believe that the artists are the essential threads in the cultural fabric
of a populace and they hold an immense potential in shaping the thought process of
masses. My desire to work with and for people has prompted me to take up Print making as my focus for the Master’s degree in Fine Arts.
The ideas that interest me most are working with the natural organic qualities found in
wood and wood grain. My lendeavor are to reflect the idea of nature’s creative and
destructive processes. The driving focus in expressive language are the ideas of time and
its passage, mortality, rebirth, and renewal all revolving around the sensitive patterns and
textures in my embossments. Working with natural and handmade paper, I am constantly
being challenged how to mediate the relationship between my material surface and that of
my conceived image so that they coexist synergistically. Beginning with my original
drawing, I engrave it on a prepared wood block, using hand gravers and assorted hand
carving tools. This can take between 40-300 hours. Next, I emboss the paper over the
wood engraving with an antique flatbed press. After embossing, I hand paint the image
with watercolor, acrylic or oil based paints made of pigments that I personally mix. This
are one of my style for work.
Over the last few years, I have been working on a series of monotypes and
calligraphic prints about nature and time. In creating this series I wanted to
accomplish several things. First to convey a sense of the passage of time as if it
flows on a river. I used organic shapes and lines found in nature to represent the
patterns and intersecting events of life.
Secondly, I was challenged by the idea of producing texture and detail to simulate
and reference nature. I began to move away from the flat surface of monotypes to
the relief textures in calligraphy. I etched into the plates and built up other areas
with natural fibers and delicate handmade Japanese papers. I then inked the plates
in multiple colors and ran them through an etching press to create an embossed
print.
Currently, I am investigating the connection between Nature and its associations
with the feminine and human nature. I produce forceful, yet lyrical and abstracted
images found in Nature by layering papers and fibers with oil paint washes and
glazes on wood panels or canvas. By focusing on the microscopic patterns in Nature,
I draw attention to the universal images that speak to all humanity.
Every piece of work and element is a journey taken - they are vehicles of transcendence,
a place or situation revisited, with the added element of memory. Different aspects of the
journeys become apparent in each set of images, various paths are followed and often
retraced as new insights are gained on every return.
Isolation is now over,
the blue infinite sky, a state of inertia during rising velocity,
maternal bonds to the grass-like subtleness of the earth,
with which I am contained in an amniotic existence.
These states are omni-present, guiding my spirit,
teaching perseverance, never succumbing to instability,
learning from the tears, conversing with nature’s keeper.
The driving focuses in expressive language are the ideas of time and its passage,
mortality, rebirth, and renewal all revolving around the sensitive patterns and textures in
my embossments. Working with natural and handmade paper, I am constantly being
challenged how to mediate the relationship between my material surface and that of my
conceived image so that they coexist synergistically. As a part of nature, the work lives
and passes away in the rhythm of the seasons.
Even though I work in parallel with nature and create my interventions with all possible
caution, they will always remain a fundamental contradiction to themselves. It is this
contradiction on which all my work is based . Even this work cannot avoid one
fundamental disaster of our existence. It injures what it draws attention to, what it
touches: the virginity of nature.
Clearly it is only in her very last refuges that nature is still intact, inexhaustible; it is only
there that enchantment is still reality. On any day of the year, in every season, in any
light, in any weather; in the Largest and Smallest. These days however, people are not
interested in this. Nature is no longer an issue, except to a few Greens, who mostly can no
longer tell a lime tree from a beech tree.
Of course, there are many who pretend to love nature. Like the ones who claim to want
peace. The fact is, they lost nature long ago. They don't see it any more, let alone hear it,
smell it , taste it or touch it. When they do in fact take a look, they still don't see: they lost
the prerequisites long ago for a larger, expansive and transitory overall view.
To unite, condense and amalgamate the specific possibilities of a landscape at a given
season to form a unique pinnacle, the apotheosis of that season in that landscape.
Implementing what is potentially possible, what latently exists in nature, to literally allow
what never existed but was always there to become reality; the ever present - Utopia.
Even one second of a lifetime is enough. The event has happened. I have awakened it and
made it visible.
Make natural space into Art-space? Where is the limit on the narrow line between nature
and art? Art? Life! What counts is the utopian character, the life- and art-blending
character of my actions. My response to the events that mark my existence. My life. Are
there art-lovers interested in my life?
A picture. A leaf, laden with flowers, drifting down a brook. Life.
Towards Nature.
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