Ani-paintings

When I had a bad knee injury, a ligament tear and had to undergo a knee surgery I was drawing throughout the difficult episode. And again I thought I could see the ligament breaking and knee giving way when the injury happened. There was such a distinct form and colour for the injury. This I tried to replicate with the help of animation and some voice over which later on came out as an abstract animation ‘The Stain’. Even though it was done as an animation I always thought this is a painting but existing in time. This is first of this kind.

Later this practice of doing painting existing in time happened during my ‘Red white and black’ series. This started as a series of paintings as a byproduct of my visit to the tile factory here. A flash of red caught my eye across a grunting, panting machine: a glimpse of feminity in a dusty noisy hot masculine world. As the painting took place, all the colours drained away except red black and white. The series continued (with yellow creeping in somewhere in the middle) and I learnt that many a time a single frame doesn’t contain them. Some of them exist in a single point of time while others flow with time hence I took animation as the medium. These animations are actually moving paintings shown as paintings, by hiding all other part of the screen, thus maintaining the timeless nature of a painting even while they move in time. I called them ‘Ani-paintings’.

I have added other works also in this series. Even if they don’t have similarity in colours the treatment is almost the same; they are moving paintings so fall in the category of ani-painting. Yellow &Black is the only exception which does tell a story. But then again it is somewhat different from a ‘normal’ story. I add some paintings also in this series other than ani-paintings. They have to be taken as paintings existing in a single point in time.