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Straight from the heart

Geeta Vadhera is one of few artists who can blend the figurative with the abstract in a perfect mélange. Take her current exhibition ‘Qalb Qudrat’, showing at the Art Select gallery till October 31. The images in her paintings are real i.e. from Qudrat or nature; yet, their environment is surreal — from the Qalb or heart.

A painter for more than 25 years, the Indian artist has had 36 solo shows across Europe, Australia and Southeast Asia to date. Though she has not exhibited in Dubai before, she has had a number of buyers from the banking, investment and real estate sectors here. This is the first showcasing of these works.

Geeta’s oil on canvas paintings are snapshots from the natural world, “sieved through her inner vision”. Nature and its human correlation is portrayed in a myriad hues through her paintings. Her compositional structure hinges on the tension between negative and positive space, creating rhythmical beats.

In her landscape paintings, what she divulges makes the viewer 
wonder what she has hidden. Some of her symbolic paintings such as ‘Drakht Mere Darmiyan’ have rich textural qualities and an element of mystery. ‘Bheega Kinara’ portrays a dewdrop stained horizon, which fades with the wetness and evokes the memories of solitude or the pain of a parting. It is much more than a plain landscape though, as dewdrops also work as a strong metaphor for the sobbing heart. In the same vein, a vast colour patch juxtaposed with a woman in ‘Us Taraf’ symbolises longing.

Geeta says, “The experience or impact is what I attempt to paint. As I experience life in its many forms, there are some moments that leave their own indelible impact on me. That impact becomes a presence that haunts me until I exercise it by putting brush to canvas. Each of my works has its own moment of association and raison d’etre. I paint to relate my inner self, my space, to this association.”

The treatment in the artist’s paintings is delicately graded; the succession of hues, one dissolving into another, makes the theme resounding, appearing and becoming one with the viewer. The eye movement commanded by the beautiful mould of positive and negative space in her canvas lends a compact look to her powerful design as well.

Inspiration for Geeta, as with most others, comes from just about anything around her. “It could be the rippling gradation of the sea, the transparent tender dewdrops appearing on lifeless, crushed ochre leaves, left out impressions of time on the desert sand, or even just an impressionable moment — all of it inspires me,” she says. “My thoughts flow through the figurative and sometimes through the formless abstraction and I drop myself in between these two. Each canvas has dealt with one such moment. The revealing truth of that moment is the very basis of these works. These paintings are my own conversations with the canvas.”

So what target audience is she looking to converse with? “Mature, self-made individuals who have come in touch with their own inner being and are not afraid of bold experiments!”

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