Faces among faces

Acrylic (with knives only) on canvas

Beauty in the shadows

Charcoal on Paper

Sunset - 2

Acrylic on Canvas

From fevers to sunsets

Sunsets - 1

Acrylic on Canvas

Emma

Peace

(Charcoal on paper)

in the arms of the angel
fly away from here
from this dark cold hotel room
and the endlessness that you fear

you are pulled from the wreckage
of your silent reverie
you're in the arms of the angel
may you find some comfort here

memories seep from my veins
let me be empty
and weightless and maybe
I'll find some peace tonight

Boxes

Why paint..

Painting is a relief.

It is a set of experiences one carries deep inside one's self, that is desperate to get out.  It is a representation of the story. The catharsis of the moment.  In the act and in the design, it provides an overwhelming sense of peace.

It is at once isolation and intimacy.  It is silent conversations with yourself. A slow moving dance with the essence, the remnants of the emotion that finds form and shapes and colors and smells and textures.  Like blood on a white canvas.

It is the only resort when every other form of expression is constrained.  When the words sound too small and music too loud. But the brush!  The brush feels free and fluid - to say it all.

And when its over, there is relief.  There is peace. The turbulence finds calmness. Like sand at a shore after an angry sea retreats. It is smooth.  And black.  And laid to rest.  The music sounds beautiful and the words come alive.

 The world becomes a beautiful place again.

Pop Art

I am in an Andy Warhol state of mind these last six months, loving the bright colors of the pop art movement.  I have been trying to do an oil painting about a bunch of ghosts in caves for a while now, but getting quite frustrated with the wet weather in Bangalore and consequent non-drying of the canvas.  It has been a year almost since I touched oil paints and have forgotten the challenges of the medium, particularly at scale.  This painting is an effort to stem the frustration a bit, get the colors out in a much easier medium - charcoals. It took me 30 minutes this morning to do this, on an A3 size paper.

It's like eating a fast food burger vs a slow cooked lamb.  There is instant satisfaction, but in your heart you know you are cheating, the slow cooking is the real deal :-))

Fantasy

How can I keep my soul in me,
so that it doesn't touch your soul?
How can I raise it high enough,
past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it,
among remote lost objects,
in some dark and silent place
that doesn't resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin's bow,
which draws *one* voice out of two separate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.
 - Rilke

Poetics of Space

Found these beautiful lines written about painting landscape based works .

The Spirit of Place... Emotive response to the sensual ineffable poetics of space. The strange is sometimes very beautiful. Seeing incorporates visionary imagination. beyond the play of surfaces, to spiritual essence. Into the Light

Dots by Vinu

[Crayons on Paper] Artist: Vinu

Pooja at Hema's

[Acrylic on Canvas]

Nudes

It's been ages since I went back to drawing. I have been questioning the role of drawing in a painting for a while now. Should a painting really be that planned or should it be a more free flow of expression - isn't the latter what art is really about? In any case, a chance discovery of a set of charcoals in my mecca, William Penn led to a few quick nude drawings during a work break .... will put up more as they come along.

[Charcoal on Paper]

[Charcoal on Paper]

India Shining

The Sea

The Band - Revisited

(Acrylic on Canvas) Its been close to two years since I painted the original Band. This new painting is just an experiment to see how the technique and color complexity has evolved over the years. Quite happy :-)

Light in the Dark

{Acrylic on Canvas]

We grow accustomed to the Dark
When light is put away
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye

A Moment -- We uncertain step
For newness of the night
Then fit our Vision to the Dark
And meet the Road -- erect

And so of larger -- Darkness
Those Evenings of the Brain
When not a Moon disclose a sign
Or Star -- come out -- within
The Bravest -- grope a little
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead
But as they learn to see

Either the Darkness alters
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight
And Life steps almost straight.

- Emily Dickinson

Citylights

(Acrylic on Canvas)

These city lights
They glisten on the horizon
Dance to the sounds of late night revellers
Drinking, carousing, vomiting between destinations
Each one of them signals life
Ordinary people watching tv,
Talking
Laughing
Crying
Sleeping
Their minds silent but for the dreams they see
They rest humming in the distance
And when I look at them
I think of what brought to this place
This cold, loud space built on dreams
Most broken, a few fulfilled
And I wonder what they hold for me
-Kojo (from the web)

Weeping Willow

[Oil on Canvas]

A willow of crystal, a poplar of water,
a pillar of fountain by the wind drawn over,
tree that is firmly rooted and that dances,
turning course of a river that goes curving,
advances and retreats, goes roundabout,
arriving forever:
the calm course of a star
or the spring, appearing without urgency,
water behind a stillness of closed eyelids
flowing all night and pouring out prophecies,
a single presence in the procession of waves
wave over wave until all is overlapped,
in a green sovereignty without decline
a bright hallucination of many wings
when they all open at the height of the sky,

course of a journey among the densities
of the days of the future and the fateful
brilliance of misery shining like a bird
that petrifies the forest with its singing
and the annunciations of happiness
among the branches which go disappearing,
hours of light even now pecked away by the birds,
omens which even now fly out of my hand...

(an extract of Sunstone by Octavio Paz)