Artist Statement

There is a tradition of oral storytelling in India that dates back to 1500 BC. When performers sense that their audience’s attention is waning, they recapture it by introducing a parallel, intersecting story into the narrative. My series Sadlands is influenced by this art of storytelling and by the process of writing a novel. It explores three intersecting stories: a childhood in an apartment in Chennai, India; a group of young neighbours solving mysteries in contemporary small-town Alberta; and the life of an old Saskatchewan cowboy whose ranch was later converted into Grasslands National Park. Together, these threads explore themes of displacement, nostalgia, legacy as well as the myth and promise of the West.

My medium is oil paint with walnut oil over a layer of acrylic. I paint alla prima on wood panels prepared with a gloss medium and acrylic gesso. My influences include multigenerational literary fiction such as East of Eden and Midnight’s Children for their themes and magic realist elements; techniques in film such as the highly chromatic lighting used in Suspiria (1977); and stories and relationships within my neighborhood and the Indian city I grew up in, which give my work a foundation in lived reality. For instance, Group at the Stampede’s composition is a nod to Goya’s Group on a Balcony and employs a backlit lighting source common in film. Rae is inspired by my neighbour’s father, who grew up on a ranch in the 1940s. He remembered coyotes trailing him on his walks to school as a boy. I applied the Dutch angle (used in film) to heighten tension and both an analogous and complementary colour scheme.

This work is a deviation from my previous series, Games at Twilight, which was heavily influenced by poetry, classical Indian literature, and the fading recollections of a childhood in India. That earlier series was most recently featured at the Art With Heart auction at Casey House, in a group exhibition at LL Contemporary in Ontario, and at the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair.