Gandhi Ashraya

My birth place is small town and my native place is village but shifted to metropolitan city like Baroda. Where I see everything in larger scale like huge buildings, big flyovers, and these conflicts reflects in my works. My larger than life size images represent the same. In fact I disappointed with the development of cities, the way we live unnaturally, Cutting trees destroying nature. I prefer to work in many layers in the paintings. Before started to use paints, I use large scale of screen printing in my works. Over the screen print on canvas, I do spray with using compressor. After all these process, I do paint on top of that. It like removing those parts, somewhere it is completely erased whereas somewhere it became foggy as through that layer, one can see background image too. I paint images over that. I use images as symbols. For example in my works “Pakad” which may symbol of pillar as well as effort of labours similarly “Time changes everything”, or “Good Bad I don’t know”, I used the image of television inside that I used the face of donkey or in work “clerk” represent the middle class men. In fact put up so many small images together. Those images come from my childhood memories of villages. I belong to carpenter family. Vishwakarma is being considered the main God for the carpenters. According to Hindu mythology, God Vishwakarma had created the world. He crafted the Mahal of Vishnu and other deities. Even He crafted the Lanka of Ravana too. We used to pray the tools while praying Vishwakarma. Which one can relate through the images of tools which I prefer to use in my works like “Pakad”, or “Mother tree”, many more. In fact I never played with regular toys unlike other child but I used to play with the tools which my grandfather and great grandfather used to practice while making furniture. That is also one of the reasons for those tools become dominant part in my work of art. Basically my journey of life from my childhood until today and my work of art blend with each other. I paint my life, my thoughts, and my journey. Images which I used in my work generally comes from my past memories of my life for example chulha, where my mother used to cook food in my childhood, bicycle which I used to go to school, or so on. For me blank canvas is my diary I paint day to day images through I passes by, weather images from my past memories or a present day. In my life I have always seen ups and downs; you can see my life's journey in my work of art. I include the nature in my work of art. I get a little disappointed to see the conflict between environment and development. Actually what is development; I keep on inquired and deal about certain questions through the work of art towards the viewer. Although I open my work of art to interact for viewer’s experience. Viewer can add their experience to my work of art and take up to any direction to achieve aesthetic pleasure. Amarnath Sharma