I’ve had this post on hold for a while now because I’ve been having hard time wrapping my head around the direction my art has evolved in the past three months. For an artist who spent years deciphering the “how too" secrets of classical realism, to diverge into a more experimental and spontaneous direction was a big surprise, first of all for myself!
Its hard to say what exactly pushed me to try out something new, but it could be the simple fact that I had no access to life models and my easel was broken at the time and all I had in my studio was a glass table I inherited form a friend of mine(thank you, thank you!). But being a strong believer in the fact that an artist is a profession like any other I had no intention of waiting until fall to resume my life painting practice so I turned to my glass table in the garage studio and decided to try something new. As I was experimenting I realized that I'm at a point where I have a mental recipe book of poses, colour mixtures, hue temperatures, to which I can reach out when composing. I was no longer dependent strictly on what I see in front of me, and to my surprise I likes it. Artwork is created by painting on glass and transferring the imprint to paper using the technique called monotype. Each artwork is original and a one-off. Each mark placed on glass is permanent, leaving no room for error and creating a sense of immediacy and exploration. Unlike the more traditional approach when all the energies are focused on acute observation and control, the monotype technique is quite risky. I learned to enjoy surprise and feeling comfortable with ambiguity. I enjoy the gamble in the process, not knowing exactly how it will turn out. There's usually something drastic that happens at the end before I overlay the image unto the paper and then it's either success or a throwaway. Click here to view works.