HOMECOMING

I’ve titled my recent work ‘Homecoming’. I moved to NYC five years ago, so there is a sense in my earlier work of a longing for India. Not just in the sense of missing it but also a yearning to make sense of it. Through the distant gaze of someone somewhere else. By heightening certain elements, almost stylizing the subjects, I was pulling away – trying to see them with the abstracted clarity distance can give you.

My newer works are different. I feel a shift. They are not as much about looking outwards but inwards. The figures in these more recent paintings are fuller, larger, weightier, and messier. When they’re alone, they’re often crouching, turning in on themselves – looking for answers within. When they’re in pairs, they’re reaching out, touching one another. In these double portraits, the subjects are similar in form but different in colors. There’s a sense of reunion. Of two parts becoming one whole. Of a return to self.