Not Random Art - Page 37


As an artist I strive to create work that reflects my own intellectual and emotional breadth in a balanced dynamic so that the viewer has an opportunity to explore the work and find his or her own meaning in the work. Like any good painter, I strive to not over work a piece, and I feel chagrin when a piece is over the top or preachy. From a process perspective, it means developing a piece until only what matters is present, and also not being afraid to destroy if it’s not working. The immersive experience will change with the characteristics of each piece. For example, in pieces like “Que Birdman?” or the one I just finished, “Aquatic Serpent”, the size is an important part of the experience. These pieces are each 9 feet by 12 feet—they are the size of a wall. Painting them is a physical experience, all the while I am thinking and adding elements like color and shapes that express my intent and later guide the viewer through a visual narrative. It is my hope that when a viewer experiences these pieces, he or she meets me half way by adding their own emotional and intellectual framework and experiences so that the works fulfill their reason for being, and there is an honest exchange between the art and the viewers.

We would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?

No, I do not consider audience perception when creating my work. I don’t feel that it’s my job to please audiences, I feel that it’s my job to create honest work that reaches audiences ;but I cannot architect or design a prosthetic intent for audience perception. I trust in the transcendence of art and its power to reach the right viewer at the right time. I believe that if I create with the full breadth of my intellect and am emotionally present and vulnerable (for my own reasons), then the work will be able to stand on its own. For example, the piece “Uthethesia Ornatrix (AO) I” with the words, “Take my breath, take it” painted on top of AO moth wing patterns from microscopic images is part of a series that is intimate and personal to me. It echoes feelings of incredible loss that I experienced at the time. I used a scientific process of viewing and analyzing the transfer of alkaloid from male to female moths for defense. This helped me understand the exchange of feelings love and loss that come when something/someone important is lost forever. I sold the series to a patron who loved the aesthetic composition and overall feeling of the works. Years later I ran into the patron again, her husband had died, and all she could say was how the paintings helped her cope with such a great loss because they gave her permission and words to express grief and find comfort. As an artist, there is nothing more humbling.

Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Indra. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

I will continue to paint for as long as I live because it’s the only way to know why I live. I am very fortunate to have a curious mind and to have people in my life who help me stay informed and share their experiences and perspectives with me. Reflection on everything that goes on in the world keeps ideas reproducing like bunnies, the challenge is in deciding which to pursue and which to let go. At the moment there are three more wall-sized paintings waiting to painted, two of these use American flag motifs to communicate the angst of the current political direction. There are also two installations to look forward to, one is a political installation featuring everyday items with various messages, the other is about wishes, desires and the power of small objects. I don’t see a teleological or linear trajectory for my Art, I see it reflecting the world as it goes with the intent to make it better, equitable, and more loving.

nd in the same time engage myself to the teaching. I felt that what I had learned, both from a technical and humanistic point of view, had to be transmitted. The world of education , where I continue to work with passion and curiosity, drives me to work on the communication and on the attention, and it is not a clichè, if I say that it is much more what everyday I learn from the guys, than of what I teach them.

However I have never given up the idea to continue, also for a moment, as I before said, my expressive search path. I knew that one day I would been payed from a personal point of view, not from the point of view of the reputation or the economy but personal satisfaction, linked to the artistic results. In my opinion painting or drawing mean, first of all, to be honest, in other words not to try to do something, that you can not to do, but to work hard, so that the acquisition of the technology allows you to get to do what you thought. My vision of the world through the pictorial aesthetic, is the union between a real passion to communicate the analysis of the things, that are around us and the filtering of them through a compositional choice, but above all, is the safety sensation that each brush stroke, every sign, represents the subject of the painting, the main character and the bearer of the message. I can finally say, that in the last years , I am ready to say, here, that these are my pictures, I feel mature and I present them to you.


I was lucky enough to have as a teacher and friend, a great Italian artist and master of the woodcut as Tranquillo Marangoni. The first thing he taught me, and that I will always take inside me is that we need have hurry, you need to take care of every detail so that what you present to the audience, is really what that you want to show of your intentions. So, in order to do that, you have to be prepared in the artistic discipline and in the medium, that you have to learn, so that an artist or a painter or a designer can build through manual techniques , a painter or designer has different possibilities of interpretation.

Each technique must be studied in order to understand its meaning. Michelangelo, Picasso and Bacon are the painters that I love, they have focused their artistic expression in the study of the human figure , and especially every deep aspect of the Aristotelian view of the world, but my interest is, above all in the feelings that a human being receives from his senses.

It becomes for me the same meaning of the painting, and everything that I do on the paper or canvas, is represented by the sign, that expresses the final product of the artistic work. Meaning and significance are mixed in the representation of a very fragmented world, confused and disoriented. The computer screen or smartphone is a multiplier of images, and I sometimes wonder, if they need also my image. I answer yes, they need, because the representation, in this limited space in height and length, but not in depth, has to be investigated, in order to represent the vision we have of this fragmentation, this deafening silence of humanity overwhelmed by events and immersed in a seemingly unknown context.






What in your opinion defines a work of art? And moreover, what could be the features that mark the contemporariness of an artwork?

II must admit I find this question incredibly hard! What defines a work of art??? I keep coming back to “originality” and “passion”. I think if someone has created something from scratch with his own hands, with passion, with heart and soul, whatever and wherever that spiritedness and desire stems from, no matter how beautiful or how ugly, you could call it art.

As for the contemporariness of an artwork, I don’t necessary believe there is a specific feature which defines the work modern. All art at one point in time was “contemporary” in comparison to what came before it.















All my way is influenced by encounterings.








