A amazing and informative evening spent at The Fushcia Futures Art Event.

I was lucky enough to win an invite to an exclusive event by The Fuschia Tree Online art gallery. This was an exclusive event organized to launch their ambitious Fuschia Futures program, held at the Trident Hotel Mumbai on the 12 th of March.
The event was also targeted at educating the collectors about the intricacies of collecting meaningful art, through the discussions of the eminent panel members. The panelists were from a diverse cross section of the art world. These included, Anders Petterson, Louisa Buck, Dr. Alka Pandey, Anupa Mehta and Arshiya Lokhandwala.
The event was moderated by Sharmishta Ray. Each an expert in their field.

        Being one of the few artists present in the audience, my perspective of the discussion held was perhaps a little different.A variety of topics were discussed ranging from how the value of a particular art work appreciates, to the role of art critics in educating not just the collectors but also the public in general.
The major topic that seemed to overlap all these other discussions was how the Indian Art market was different form the international or 'western' art market. One of the major point under this subject was the lack of good museum spaces and public institutions for showcasing contemporary art, most artists even most collectors in India  have to solely depend upon art gallery spaces for any kind of  interaction with contemporary art.
        While I found the entire evening riveting  and educational, the one or two subjects that were meant solely for the artists attention were, that as an artist we must try to build a long term relation with the gallery that we are dealing with, rather than just have a short term deal that may seem lucrative at the time, but would probably run out of steam rather quickly.
         Coming back to the stars of the show the artists that had been chosen through a rigorous procedure and then some extensive training withe the expert jury members. Their work was seriously thought provoking, the fact that artists at such an initial stage in their careers had developed such a deep style, surely had me going back to my drawing board :)!!

Going back to my oils and canvas.

As I sat in front of my canvas, I realised how much I had missed holding a brush in my hands having turned to enamelling and other pursuits.

I had this canvas all sketched out kept in a corner of my home where I also conduct classes. A student of mine saw this canvas and asked me as to how come, it had been lying there unpainted for such a long time. I said that I had forgotten all about, the one sentence that she said made me really think, all she said was, 'how could you forget it's right here in front of you'.
This really made me realize, how much I had been avoiding doing something I truly loved, making up excuses like I am too busy with real work, with freelance jobs, with orders and so on...
Now as I have taken up oils once more, I feel the calm and peace that I had always felt when I painted,and also realized how out of touch I was and needed to practice more, well guess I am going to have loads of fun doing that !!

I was looking for inspiration for a new series, when I saw some apples in wrapped in clear plastic, sort of got me thinking what if we too could be laminated! Not literally of course, but perhaps our thoughts, our ideas, visions.
Being a visual artist I guess I often see things in my mind like a film reel, unfortunately a very fast film reel, so many ideas zooming through like a highway.
It always makes me wonder, how to catch one of these ideas efficiently enough so that I could develop it further, don't get me wrong, I catch enough of them to do my work!
But it seems a lot of good ideas seem to shine like a flash and before you know it you are distracted by something else and the idea is gone. Often I am thinking about a painting idea or maybe a trying out a new technique or style of using my colors, some one talks or the phone rings and poof! its gone!
After getting distracted a few times like this I realized that I was going about it the wrong way, the only way to laminate ideas like these was to either write it down or sketch it out quickly.
Once I started sketching out this very idea I realized there was a lot to be said here but I am going to let my sketches and the final work do the talking here!!