Painting Exhibition by Suruchi Jamkar at Gallery Space, Hyderabad

‘ STORY OF A CREATIVE MIND’ 27TH SOLO show by Suruchi Jamkar

About the exhibition:
Suruchi Jamkar’s 27th solo exhibition showcases 30 paintings in Oil and acryllics on canvas. They depict the reaction of an imaginative mind to several visually and spiritually stimulating places and experiences.

Inspiration: These myriad impressions and artistic meditations are experienced through her travels. “ Every journey is an exploration - be it travelling to a remote pottery village, a nearby spiritual place or an inward journey towards your childhood memories. Now is the time to lie back, explore and enjoy,” says Suruchi. It is this creativity inspired by her memories and musings that has found expression on her canvases. Sculptures of Hampi, deserts of Rajasthan and the starlit skies are predominant backdrops of her works.

Technique:The use of earthen monochromatic colours fusing with the vibrant bright ones and her unique style which is very narrative and appealing conveys her story most eloquently. Dry brushing interspersed with thick knife application of oil paints gives a convincing depth to her works.

Subject of paintings : Suruchi and her iconic women wearing turbans, are a visual treat. They come across as strong yet beautiful, contemplative yet ethereal. At times they are relaxing amidst nature, using rocks to recline on. Under the starlit skies one experiences the eternity and tranquility of life.

Suruchi ’s paintings create the feeling of languorous comfort and easy pace, away from the rush of the rat race outside. We invite you to come and be a part of her rich and peaceful world.

About the artist:
Born on 22 March 1980, Suruchi is a young and established artist who studied at the prestigious JJ School of art, Mumbai. She has put up solo shows at many prominent galleries across India namely Visual Art Gallery, New Delhi, the Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai India International Centre, Delhi, India Habitat Centre, Delhi , Nehru Centre, Mumbai and has gained recognition for her work in the form of critical appreciation and awards like Nehru cultural Award, Dolly Kersetjee Award. Suruchi currently lives in Hyderabad and has travelled extensively through Rajasthan, Karnataka, Laddakh, Southeast Asia and Europe . She has worked in diverse mediums like tempera, Fresco, water colours, pastels, silk and brocade,stone ware ceramics, metal welding. Her versatility is seen in the way she blends a mundane medium to speak expressively on a subject. She also enjoys Indian classical vocal music she painted onstage with vocal artist in a classical evening titled ‘Barse Rang Malhar’ in front of a thousand audiences. She has also done workshops at Bharat Bhavan Bhopal in ceramic stoneware; in Banasthali she learnt the age old technique of fresco and tempera. Suruchi travelled all over Europe studying the art of the masters and their masterpieces of which she found the art in the Vatican the most imposing and larger than life.

Praise for the artist:

‘Suruchi’s world has a mystique of its own. She is an ever vigilant painter who keeps storing all impressions of what she comes across. She has a unique view of her own. It is a journey of thousands of years that she has so efficiently spread on canvas…which has no boundaries’
-Sudhir Tailang, Deccan Chronicle, Asian Age


Suruchi’s paintings make me feel happy! I believe that if she keeps the paint talking she will succeed and go a long way
-Nafisa Ali

Concept
The mind is the most amazing thing in this world…or that is what we love to think. The mind is very impressionable….everything the body and its senses come across makes some impression or the other. But some impressions last for years together….resurfacing with the same intensity that was felt the first time.

Suruchi has painted such impressions, sometimes they originate from her childhood days where she and children of the neighborhood had an obsession playing variations of marbles all day long. Some images are of a month long escape to a small farmhouse in the middle of the jungles of south Goa, where the mind dumped the mundane and thought of things beyond, in a relaxed ‘put your feet up’ kind of way. Thus the images of girls wearing turbans (the turban acting as a metaphor for a thinking cap) surfaced.

There are influences of her 5 years stay in Rajasthan, the starlit dessert skies and turbans, the stone sculptures of Hampi and Somnathpura. The show is an amalgamation of the imagery of the mind as it soaks the places and responds to the experiences they evoke.

Suruchi calls the show ‘of Eternity and Tranquility’ because of the Hues used….mainly earthen tones dominated by browns greys and at times green. She selected these colours because of the urge to feel human existence and to feel at peace with the soul. The subjects are mainly girls because the female is the ‘janani’ the certified creator on earth and being a woman she relates well with the feminine. The girls tell the story told them (while creating) eloquently to the viewers.

“I went to Hampi first and what captured my attention was the ambience of this 14th century place. It revolved around the Divine, there are temples with their weathered ‘mandapas’, adorned with gods and goddesses, deities and demi gods. The first works I did after coming were ‘exploring the divine’ where I have shown humanity exploring the concept of god. Then there where the little decorative patterns adorning the pillars of the temples, I found them really fascinating! And thus the series ‘ancient design’ took birth”.

Suruchi is a slave of imagination and creativity, where many a times painting becomes an urge….which gives peace only after the artist translates the image from the mind onto her canvas.