Metamorphoses of Interpretations - Limited Edition of 25 Print

This work, made in ink, watercolour and acrylic, is titled Metamorphoses of Interpretations. The piece shows three snakes, one lifelike, the other imaginary and the third skeletal, all crawling about in bluish sand. I have tried to show how there are different ways of looking at anything and how these world-views can vary so much. Take an ordinary snake for example. The snake at the bottom is a 'real' snake, as it appears to the eye. The sand it is rolling in appears to be particulate and is composed of many different shades of blue. Although we can safely assume that this image is shared by all humans,  its impression on different sorts of people can be poles apart. To the ideal artist, living mostly in his own world of feelings and emotions, the snake might represent weirdness, terror, or eroticism. He has no use of the structural details of the snake- how it moves, how long it is, how it sees, are of relative unimportance to him. On the other hand an ideal scientist is more interested in the snake as a mechanical and chemical device- he is fascinated by its scales, its mating habits and its anatomy for example. These interpretations are not restricted to just the snake. The sand too transforms into waves of colour for the artist and a regular grid for the scientist. A sufficiently engrossed person might not be able to look at a thing any other way than he is trained to and cannot really comprehend the importance of other features he might be overlooking. A question arises: what should we take to be real? In the midst of the stream of life, this question is hardly worth thinking about. Ordinary people look at a snake whatever way suits their immediate purpose. Going beyond serpents, how can one decide what interpretation one should use, given a subject one is not versed well in? How can we really build into ourselves this realisation that there can be multiple meanings of a thing and train ourselves to look at it correctly according to the context?  Also, do there exist universal interpretations of things? Superficial appearance is certainly not the answer, as shown by both Kafka's Metamorphosis and recent advances in artificial intelligence. The original not being on sale, high quality giclée prints are available on archival 310 GSM Hahnemühle paper, 1:1; printed using archival inks, these prints will last one a lifetime. Though, really, it does not make much sense in limiting the number of editions of a digital print, as I also indeed wish to control what aspects of quality I can (by way of supervising printing myself, and thereby being excluded from being able to sell open edition on Saatchi), I have decided to limit them to 25. As regards the costing rationale: having attempted selling my prints, previously, at their cost prices themselves, and having left the evaluation of my labour upon my customers to decide- and consequently, not having been able to make ends meet, I have decided, for the first time, to set a fixed profit for myself, in keeping with current practice. Wishing to remain entirely honest however, I must add that it costs me ₹475 per square foot to have the print printed, and ₹100 to have the original scanned, besides which packaging can be accounted for by adding another ₹1000. Entirely unable myself to set a price upon my work, I have chosen what I've seen on Saatchi itself being set for other similarly sized prints (choosing to remain still on the more reasonable side of things). It is for me, really, I must admit, an experiment, this.

Printmaking:Ink on Paper

Artist Produced Limited Edition of:25

Size:27.8 W x 21.9 H x 0 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.