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Nature as an inspiration for artistic consideration has exerted a powerful hold on the minds of artists for centuries, especially in the field of painting.
A journey through the art of Shivani Dugar involves a journey into the soul and essence of nature celebrating the abundant beauty of nature and the five elements - air, earth, wind, fire and space. She absorbs and is absorbed by the natural world, taking it’s sights and sounds, it’s colors and it’s textures and reflecting them into meditations on nature, in all it’s awesome ‘sublime’ power and it’s delicacy of pattern and texture. Her work operates on two planes of exploration: firstly, the concept of a spiritual quest into Nature, and, secondly, an occupation with the purely formal questions of the medium, addressing the interplay of line, color, form, and brushstroke to give structure and dynamism to this quest.
Early on in her career, Shivani became entranced by the art of printmaking, fascinated by the intricate lines and crosshatching of etching, engraving, and the soft lines of lithography, as well as the difficulty of predicting the final outcome of the piece. Her fascination with the elements expressed itself early in her works while she was still including illustrative elements and story-telling images to create a quasi narrative. Color was certainly there in those early prints, but it was more the art of making the ‘gestural’ line, dividing up the space and creating a mood that occupied her creations. Later on her prints began to develop into full fledged musings on the natural world, reflecting the beauties of leaf patterns, sunlight, the bark of trees, flower petals, sometimes almost replicating their patterns and effects with crystalline accuracy and details, while persistently playing with abstraction.
For Shivani, art begins with an emotion, an emotion created by Nature. The emotion creates a gesture, which in turn creates a line, a line which then divides and creates a space and tension. This is the germination of all her work. Her study of the making of this ‘mark’ led her to explore intricate layering and positioning of marks, which in turn, create dynamic movement and texture. This technique of mark making, perfected in her prints, is the basis of her work as she moved into the area of oil painting.
Color has now entered Shivani’s works. The paintings are full of color but yet not ‘colorful’. With an almost puritanical restraint she limits her palette to a minimum of colors, instead choosing to explore the many tones of each color chosen, often creating monochromatic works that gradually reveal their myriad tonalities. She shies away from an overt, glossy exuberance, preferring the beauty of a soft, matt landscape of oil. The delicate balance of colors creates it’s own tension as the colors vibrate against each other. Like the Abstract Expressionists of the 20th century, and the abstractions of V.S.Gaitonde within the tradition of Indian Modernist painting, she lets color have it’s own dynamism, contrasting with the movement of the textural marks. A work is thus slowly revealed under it’s own conditions, interacting with natural light to reveal different aspects of it’s shapes and colors. Often colors only reveal themselves in certain conditions of light, after careful scrutiny, something entirely natural in aspect. Many times we do not even notice the changing of the world and the light around us until, suddenly, a certain aspect is revealed and our eyes are opened to the beauty that has been so far unnoticed.
Shivani prefers not to illustrate her work, but also does not want to leave the work too open ended, as can often happen with abstraction. She insists upon leading the way into the space, creating the mark, vibrating the color, naming the work, which initiates a point of entry. Then the viewer can bring their own impressions to bear witness and interact with the work to form their own conclusions. Nature creates a response in the artist who invites us into her world where we can make the space and the experience our own.
RL Fine Arts
May 2007
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