Jayashree Chakravarty builds her paintings out of layers of superimposed forms – fragments of maps, non-sequential numbers, and half-hidden figures. Rendered in the artist`s characteristic fluid style and translucent palette, these images and motifs come together in each canvas to form elusive, transient metaphors that engage her viewers through a game of cat and mouse.
Revealing and concealing strands of her narrative...
Jayashree Chakravarty builds her paintings out of layers of superimposed forms – fragments of maps, non-sequential numbers, and half-hidden figures. Rendered in the artist`s characteristic fluid style and translucent palette, these images and motifs come together in each canvas to form elusive, transient metaphors that engage her viewers through a game of cat and mouse.
Revealing and concealing strands of her narrative with single brushstrokes, Chakravarty says that her paintings “have the feel of a dream about them”. At the same time, they “reflect her view of a contemporary transient world at an unexpected level of the ordinary” (Paths of Progression, Saffronart and Bodhi Art, 2005). In this piece, a meditating monk shares the canvas with a crumbling wall, a textured river and some cartographic markings. While the brushstrokes on the right of the piece mimic rays of sunlight, reminiscent of scenes of Buddha`s enlightenment, the colour Chakravarty has chosen for them lends the concept of enlightenment a murky, shadowy quality. Dotted lines and little footprints crisscross between the two sides of the painting, suggesting perhaps that the monk, like most other people, is torn between the corporeal and spiritual. Alternately, the artist might be indicating that to find spiritual fulfillment we only need look as far as our everyday lives – on the roads we travel and the rivers we cross.