Textured brush tales

Artist Puja Bahri is in town to show her new collection of mixed media works withu00a0a dash of imagery and some everyday odds and ends

For artist Puja Bahri, themes don't matter and neither does au00a0 fixed medium bind her. For this Delhi-based artist, who is in town with her first solo show, Myriad Rhythms: Symphony of Strokes and Colours, experimenting is the key to her work.
u00a0
"I paint what I like, I don't want to be restricted to working with a particular theme", says Bahri, whose show is being brought to Bangalore by Art Chutney, an art auction and investment company that also represents artists and their works.



With her artistic inclinations and her having taken up art as a subject in school, it came as no surprise when she decided to paint for a career. "Even though I had two academically inclined sisters, and the fact that drawing was not a serious career option then, I received no real opposition to my taking it up", she says.

Bahri's works that form part of her new show have been collected over a year and a half, with some of them actually done in 2008."Besides those with imagery, I have also done photographic series that have been edited to look like stop motion films".

Unconventional forms of media are her area of interest. Bahri has experimented with stainless steel in the past. For the future, she has little planned; her art though she says has matured and turned more abstract over the years.

"I have no plans of opening art galleries, I am here to paint. And I believe anything done with a creative passion can take you places" she says.

According to Bahri, her art is not complex. Musicians seem to figure as a recurrent theme throughout her series of paintings. "I have been sketching musicians for about 4-5 years now", she says. Also, common to most of her work, is the use of imagery, in the form of everyday objects like kettles, hand pumps, lamps etc.
u00a0
that form a large part of her exhibits in the city. Bahri feels these help people relate to and understand her work better. Colours attract her, and she tends to work with layers and layers of them, experimenting with textures all the while.
u00a0
"I use spatulas, and rollers to work with texture. Most of my paintings have many layers of colour, so even though a piece might provide the illusion of a single one, it has many underlying shades", she says.

Though Bahri started out with a degree in English Literature from Delhi's Lady Sri Ram College, she went on to Triveni Kala Sangam, New Delhi and later to Central Saint Martins, London.
u00a0
She continues to pursue short courses and workshops in various parts of the world. Education in art she claims is not much of a necessity.

"Art courses help you by keeping you in the surroundings. Mostly, it is about creativity, and that has to be inborn", she tells us. "In my case, art education helped me bind things together".

At The Sublime, UB City, Vittal Mallya Road
On from June 25, 11.30 am to 8.30 pm
Call 4113 7912