Art for me has been a means find answers to my restless self.

Till my early thirties I was just drifting from one role to another- daughter, student, wife, daughter-in-law, mother to two beautiful girls. Only after these roles were realized did I grow conscious of my restlessness. I stared by trying to paint these feelings, feelings of being lost, listlessness, of wanting something more.

My early works were figurative, faces especially eyes became a very important part of my compositions. I loved working with charcoal, pastels and ink.

During this period, as a challenge I started doing compositions on seeds, looking at them as life pods, romanticizing the universal question of continuity of life and fertility. It was whilst doodling a composition of lines during this period did the Banyan become a conscious thought to me and so began my Banyan series, in 2014.

The Banyan became my way of trying to know myself. To give form to my abstract feelings. Metaphorically the Banyan signified to me a dance of life and time.

It questions all of our preconceived notions- The bargad that, which is only a creeper- becomes a tree, its roots fall from the branches to reach out to earth, its branches merge to form other trees.

Left to its own devices, a Bargad spreads across eons of time and acres of space, personifying the majesty and power of nature. Yet, there is gentleness in it. Its graceful sprawl invites you to swing on its roots, to rest in its shade, to enjoy the cool breeze of its leaves.

Pointillism came in my work with the Banyan. From ghis-ghis of the pencil I went to drip–drop of color on my canvas.I honestly enjoy the entire process. The splitter-splatter that have a rhythm of their own.

The wait for the color to dry only after which, can I see in whole, the outcome of the previous layer of color.

The multiple layering of color gives a depth and richness to the different tones that emerge as one distances one’s self from the canvas. And as I go from one layer to another, as forms emerge, as colors change, my restlessness increases but the energy I feel now is different from the restlessness of those years before I had started to paint, especially the banyan, which still holds me under its spell. And so it continues to be my muse or am I ‘its’ muse?