ABOUT MY UNUSUAL ART

My art is the creation of beautiful, attractive, wonderful, interesting and visually appealing paintings using only my nails, fingers and palms and I do not use paint brushes to create these paintings. I use white glue and water colours to create my art. Very recently I have started using sand as well.

Today I am 35 years of age. But when I was child I was taught to copy cards and sketch things I see in nature like leaves, human beings etc. Today I do not like painting or sketching what already exists in nature i.e what I have seen in this world but instead I love to see new things getting created through my hands, things that I have never seen before, things that did not exist in this world before. My works are not replication of nature.

Instead I am a part of nature gifted with creativity, creativity which again as I have observed in my case is some thing that flows mostly naturally without much of effort, thinking or planning.

Before a painting of mine gets completed I mostly have no idea what it is going to look like. I actually rejoice every time a wonderful work is created by me. I rejoice wondering how such a self appealing work got created by me. I feel every work of art created by me is a gift of God to me, because my works appear to me more to happen to get created on their own than through my actual own planning. I many times do not plan how I am going to proceed and I do whatever I feel like doing, sometimes out of impulse.

My methods of painting using nails, fingers and palms are novel. I started my novel finger painting in 1995-96 and it has evolved with time particularly in the recent past.I have not learnt the methods from anywhere. Today my methods include taking impressions, folding and crushing, dripping to get variety of effects and results.

When white glue which I use dries up, it becomes transparent and if you add a very small quantity of water colour to it, it becomes translucent when it dries up. I have used this property to create very interesting works. Also when white glue dries up it gives a raised effect, thus textures get created and recently I have been using sand with white glue as well to get some interesting textures.

I myself cannot reproduce my paintings on my own using the same methods and therefore they are unique.

I do expect to keep on experimenting and coming up with newer methods of creating art with fingers, nails & palm.

I do not have an art background, i.e. an art degree / diploma and this leaves me with no other choice but to end up experimenting, doing and learning. The whole thing about painting with nails, fingers and palm started with an experiment and fearless experimentations are still on.

I remember the first drawing competition I participated at my Convent of Jesus and Mary School in Ambala. I was studying in KG and I drew a flower vase with flowers. I kept on making flowers and at a certain stage everything looked nice. But I was not satisfied, there was the urge to experiment, and I went on to make still more flowers till I ended up making a wonderful looking bright picture of flowers with a small vase. I was not contended with what I made but I received the first prize. The urge to experiment without fear of loss seems to have been within me since then only because I want to do better and probably want to experiment more to learn more.

Nobody taught me how to make sculptures but yet again it was experimentation, the automatic right moves, right pressures applied and the right angles at which I ended up carving that helped me become a sculptor. I used to pick up stones from the back yard of my Army Public School in New Delhi and make sculptures with them. I have also made Plaster of Paris sculptures. However while a student at the Welcom group graduate school of hotel administration, Manipal I learnt how to make pumpkin, water melon, salt dough, gelatine and thermocole carvings. I still sometime do professional fruit carving. I have done some professional set / prop designing for stage shows of Aishwarya Rai and others along with Vikram Phadnis as the choreographer of those shows.

I used to sketch portraits when I was young. But now I intend to do only nail, finger and palm painting as this is most satisfying than all my other artistic abilities.

When I was young I appreciated the beauty of nature and also felt that God is the greatest artist.

I believe that He has made all the beautiful things in nature. He has made the beauty of beautiful flowers and butterflies which sometimes seemed to me as unparalleled.

Seeing the huge world, the distant sky and when I compared the possible difference in the physical size of my body and that of the universe, I could imagine how powerful the creator of this universe i.e. God must be and also realized how small I was compared to God. Now I started praying to God that I wanted to become like his loved son and I wanted to be a good human being, living for others good i.e. I wanted to do charity etc.

Years later I started praying to God that I wanted to become according to his desire which meant that everything that I do should be what God wants me to do.

My creation of paintings seems to be blessed by God and my actions happen to appear to be just right and just as they were meant to be, everything falling into place till the right painting gets created.

From start to end of making a painting it is a puzzle which seems to get solved on its own with me sometimes ending up doing the right things automatically ( doing the right things by chance) and with me sometimes ending up taking the right decisions. Mostly I am surprised and appreciate what gets created because I personally mostly find the outcome wonderful.

My paintings have no title since they have no meaning. But as I said before they are attractive, wonderful, interesting, beautiful and visually appealing things which I think can too be used as a decoration on walls like any other painting with a title or a meaning.

I have received a lot of appreciation for my work. But some people do look for a meaning in my art. Few also do find some meanings. But however there is no meaning intended.

A child who sees a beautiful flower for the first time likes it and wants it because the flower generates interest and liking in the child. The child does not know that this beautiful thing that he is attracted to is called the flower but however he wants it only because he is attracted towards it.

Similarly people get attracted towards my paintings even if they do not find any meaning in it.

Only music played from instruments without any lyrics too have no meaning but we do like it.

This art is my profession. I love it. But one tough thing about it is washing my palms covered with white glue every time I complete my work.

Truly speaking I paint for myself though this is also my profession. I do not paint by observing what sells in the market. But I choose to paint what I like and that gives pleasure. I am not ready to sell a painting unless I am completely satisfied with the creation. I try to work further on what is not satisfying enough and in the process, it can get further deteriorated or wasted , but at times some get converted to wonders.

I believe that only a creation that I am contended with will be liked. If I am not contended how can I show such a work to someone, leave aside sell.