Important Notice

Jayashree Chakravarty saturates her paintings with multiple layers of meaning, both physically, through her thick, layered application of paint, and emotionally, through the several levels of associations that each element on the surface holds for her. The artist, however, does not allow easy access to these layers. Her paintings are a mystery, silent witnesses to her cathartic practice. In the suite of works of which the present lot is a part,... Jayashree Chakravarty saturates her paintings with multiple layers of meaning, both physically, through her thick, layered application of paint, and emotionally, through the several levels of associations that each element on the surface holds for her. The artist, however, does not allow easy access to these layers. Her paintings are a mystery, silent witnesses to her cathartic practice. In the suite of works of which the present lot is a part, “…it is Chakravarty’s use of colour, her obsessive engagement with acts of application, scraping, texturing, with acts of close pattern-making and saturation, that conveys the sense of urgency animating her exploration of sensorial and extra-sensorial experiences. Chakravarty layers disparate worlds together with great panache – the pigmental, the textural, the personal historical, and the imagistic registers are orchestrated together in a magical network that creates a telling language of associations” (Abhay Sardesai, “Mapping Consciousness, Translating Worlds”, Where the Sand Meets the Sky, Bodhi Art exhibition catalogue, 2007, p. 6).

Speaking about the striking imagery of the present lot, crisscrossed by the spiky report lines of a medical machine, the artist explains, “My life, I go through it. My parents are old and I see so many medical diagrams – so many lines of ECG. As a painter, I react to lines. Lines are very meaningful to a painter. Does this dip mean illness? Here a line is a word or a stroke, very vital, it conveys something. These lines take me to a different thought process. I paint a part of the brain and then a huge beetle, my imagination goes there. Our thoughts are eaten by so many counter thoughts, so many insects!” (as quoted in Swapna Vora, Herstory: Palimpsests of the Maps of Memory, Asianart.com, August 2007).

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