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...   Read More