abhaneotia.com

I best describe myself as a commercial artist by qualification, and a fine artist by choice.

 

After completing my Commercial art diploma in Delhi in 1987, I worked in an advertising agency for a while.

Then marriage and children took precedence over my love for professional designing.

But slowly, side by side, my love for fine art blossomed, and I found myself dappling with different mediums.

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I have never been far removed from sketching and drawing since childhood. I am told ( I was so little that I don’t remember ….) that when my grandmother worked on her easel, I would be on the floor, insisting on painting myself. All through my growing up years, anything interesting that caught my eye had to be sketched, whether it was on the last page of a note book, or the school blackboard, or more conventionally, a sketchbook….

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My husband tells tales of the times when he has seen me get up from bed in the morning, and go straight to my easel even before caring to brush my teeth. I once painted all night to give company to my daughter who needed to pull an all nighter before her final exam. Painting was the only way to keep me awake!

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Beauty in nature inspires me the most. Which is why landscapes were my first obsession, and I refused to mar them with human presence! My husband’s threat to buy works of other artists with humans in them catapulted me into making portraits. I’ve learned to love humans since then….

 

Oil was a first, with an equal fascination for charcoal and pen and ink. I started working with soft pastels, and discovered the beauty of portraits being rendered in soft pastels.

Realism or naturalism is my form of art, and that is what I strive to excel in.

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I paint for the pure pleasure of it.

When a piece is completed in a certain style, I am always eager to try a new one. I flit from one medium to another, the desire of the day deciding which tool I want to pick up.

 

Call me an art hobbyist if you will, but i would rather create variety than make a theme based series. 

Call me Howard Roark if you will, but conforming to the desires of an art gallery wanting a series is not something I want to do.