‘Bombaye’ - The Flame Tree Painting

I am driven by my passion to interpret and draw out the unique beauty of natural elements and emotions that surround us. I was born in Mumbai, India, where I spent my formative years and graduated after 5 years at University, with a degree in Art from Sir J.J. Institute of Applied Arts. I specialized in advertising and pursued a career in the same, working as a visual artist for the next 8 years in leading advertising agencies both in Mumbai and Bangalore, India. After moving to Seattle WA, US, I took a break from work, and in 2005 resurfaced with a fresh perspective, picking up my paint brushes. I had a strong desire to return back to the very reason I joined art school - to paint. This was a period of experimentation and artistic communication with my canvas since I felt so out of touch. During the first few years, I worked on numerous thoughts and struggled to create a style that excited and spoke to me. In art college I had studied oils as a medium on canvas but graduated to self teaching with acrylic paints. It excited me to use that medium in similar ways (as I would use oil paints), dense and textured. I am a product of my environment and am sensitive to what I visually see and feel around me. Passionate about the city that I am born and brought up in and the city that I currently live in, I expressed everything I saw in my natural surroundings, felt and experienced around me. That passion and love is what I have brought out on my canvases. My travels have also informed and shaped much of what I do and in return, I bring a new point of view and an invigorated energy to my canvas. I am especially drawn to works of Gerhard Richter, and in the recent years I have used these strong influences and blended them with modern and refreshing nuances to develop bright, expressive pieces of canvas art. In the recent years I have been commissioned specially sized extra large canvases by clients around the world.