Statement

Statement

My work is based on my responses to everyday living, I often think about how small things change so much in different environments. It was while getting my home done that I discovered the potential that lay in the medium of coal tar. It presents multiple possibilities. For me painting is really about how it can absorb the world around it. I don’t think that painting has to be purified in order to become itself.

In using coal tar and wires and crayons and different media to create I am harnessing the notion that painting absorbs everything around itself. I believe that it makes painting alive, part of the world that it’s in. I’m also reinventing the idea of mixed media to echo the truth that painting especially links and blends with other media. It’s great that a canvas can absorb other media and tar becomes a vital material because it is more than just a fusion agent.

I have always felt that painting has this intense symbiotic relationship with the texture and materiality of different materials. There are contradictions and contrasts that come forth as novel ideas. I always ask myself how we can set up a situation in our own work that can explore these ideas. With the limitations of mostly being a studio artist presenting studio as a subject, I try not to treat the studio preciously. I let paintings live on the floor all around me and it is as if they speak in tones when I create over days and weeks, I look at them in different kinds of light, and start again. Somehow I have tried to experiment more with external
elements, things that are built outside, and let time happen to them.

SIMRAN KS LAMBA