1985- 1986
These are paintings made during my undergraduate degree at RMIT University and the early years after graduating. They are all large works using oil, enamel and acrylic paint. My primary interests at the time focused on what paint could do in terms of gesture, mark making, paint viscosity and colour. Conclusions in the paintings were often arrived at through the process of painting itself. Using additive and reductive processes the paintings dictated their own trajectories and outcomes. I relied heavily on intuitive processes while embracing chance, happenstance and the accident as painting strategies. Working between doubt, knowledge and not knowing, the paintings were built through layers of paint application. The iconography often drew on my childhood memories of Indian festivals, particularly Holi, street and bazaars culture and everyday adornments. Having migrated from India at a very early, ideas of what India was to me, played a very important role in these formative years of my developing arts practice. Artists who were influencing the way I was make and thinking about work included: Artists from the Cobra School, Alan Davie, Ian Fairweather, the Fauvists, the early abstract expressionists.
(Documentation of other work cannot be located at this time)
