A master draughtsman, Anju Dodiya uses her paintings to weave “her own legend as though she were a fictional character caught in bizarre but lyrical narrative, a self-disruptive autobiography…[she] compels one to unravel the story, untold and told, of which the single painting seems to be but one isolated frame, and she seems to urge us, `Behold! This could be me trapped by art`” (Dilip Chitre, “Anju Dodiya: Enigmatic...
A master draughtsman, Anju Dodiya uses her paintings to weave “her own legend as though she were a fictional character caught in bizarre but lyrical narrative, a self-disruptive autobiography…[she] compels one to unravel the story, untold and told, of which the single painting seems to be but one isolated frame, and she seems to urge us, `Behold! This could be me trapped by art`” (Dilip Chitre, “Anju Dodiya: Enigmatic Variations” in Anju Dodiya: Recent Works, Gallery Chemould, 2001).
Although the title of this piece, Rain, sounds entirely benign, the phenomenon it describes is alarmingly malignant. Instead of harmless drops of rainwater, the subject of this painting is caught in a downpour of sharp swords. With her paper fluttering in the wind above her, and her arms and a pencil as her only line of defense, injury seems inevitable.
It is not surprising to see this kind of violence in Dodiya`s work – such situations are commonplace in many of her watercolours where she subjects her `painterly self` to snakes, mazes, stocks, and shackles amongst other torment. In the words of critic Gayatri Sinha in Dodiya`s work, “the real confrontations are vigorously enacted in a theatre of the self. Dodiya`s inward conflicts and concerns, particularly those that emanate from her art practice, are mirrored in a series of dramatic images” (“Feminism and Women Artists in India” in Contemporary Indian Art: Other Realities, 2002). Using her own face as leitmotif (not wanting to subject anyone else to these circumstances), the artist deftly expresses both the external pressures and persecution, and the resulting inner turmoil an artist, and particularly a female artist, often has to contend with. Dodiya also uses this piece to allude to the inherently violent nature of the creative process and the artist`s loss of part of herself to each of her creations. It is a cathartic look at the power of the creative process and the vulnerability of the artist as she subjects herself to it over and over again for the sake of her art.