Trishla Jain invites you to her pop up art exhibition ‘Tangerine Trees and Marmalade Skies’ at 4 Tilak Marg, near India Gate, in Delhi from 16-30 January 2012.
New Delhi, January 16, 2012: Painting is not another leisure vocation for Trishla, it is a spiritual engagement where, as she explains, “Words are brush strokes and colours breathe.” A student of English Literature, poetry, psychology and anthropology at Stanford, Trishla returned to her passion of painting after coming back to India. When asked why painting after pursuing English, she answers, “Painting is writing, sculpture and collage.” For her, it’s movie-making, song writing and chai-chatting all rolled into one. “It’s a grand mess of colour, paper and magic and my husband Satyan often remarks that I resemble a construction worker by the day’s end,” chuckles Trishla.
Rohit Bal inaugurates ‘That Freshness’: Rohit Bal inaugurated my first exhibition, “That Freshness” in Delhi. After an hour of mingling, he pulled me aside to a bench, titled “Happy Seat.” It was an old thing, covered in antique advertisements for hair balms, matchsticks and such like. In the middle of this antique graying tin collage was an anachronistic post card of a fluorescent fairy that exclaimed, “So Nice!” He pointed to this fairy and said, “This is why I want this bench! Capture this wild spirit. This madness, this random disregard for “the way things should be.” Dive into this!” Rohit’s keen observation has defined my work since then: it’s madder than the mad hatter now. Can you imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie? Well, that’s me.
What do colours represent: Speaking about her colour scheme that she employs while painting, Trishla says, “Colour is like the very breath of painting. They can energize and relax the feel of a painting or part of a painting. It’s an ongoing and a subtle dance, unique to each artwork.”
Art and Literature connect: Her connection with literature manifests in her artwork too where she accompanies her paintings by text. “Literature and the written word are in my blood. I am obsessed with authors like Mark Haddon, Oscar Wilde, Rumi, and Shel Silverstein and beyond. In her exhibitions one can witness how, “Text infiltrates the canvas and takes over. The truth is, words are like brush strokes for me now,” she says.
Infusing text in painting: Trishla’s teaching career made her realise that in an era of technology school students resorted to online summaries to complete their assignments, a trend that disturbed her much. She recounts, “When I taught English to eighth graders in New York, I found that most of them relied on online summaries to complete their work, rather than actually reading the text themselves. That’s when I started employing the technique of “found texts.” The student’s task was to collect a bank of words and phrases from the five or six texts found in the semester’s syllabus. Then, he or she was to create a new text, or “found poem” using words and phrases from the assembled word bank and critically analyze the result. “In many ways, my own works are born from this strategy: they are “found art pieces,” she added.
Picasso inspires Trishla: In her journey to finding painting as her true calling, one of the influences that encouraged her as an artist was the words of the legendary Picasso who famously said ‘Great artists steal’. As such, anything is fair game: song lyrics, vintage sunglasses, or the back of a milk carton or even an old discarded telephone. The art lies in bringing the varying elements together with paint and texture to tell a whole new story, in a whole new way – to unearth the vast tapestry of human consciousness.
Trishla’s cosmic connection with art: My art is a celebration of the universe’s ultimate capacity for joy and laughter. Both the ephemeral wink of the present moment and the depths of cosmic consciousness can be found within the layers of my wacky work. I believe in both Prada and Pranayam, in both The Guru and The G-Spot! From skin to spirituality, it’s all in the paint.
Art as a conversation with the Self: My art is about going within. It’s a conversation with the Self. I really don’t have a sense of what art is and what it is not. True, I don’t have any formal technical training and I make a lot of mistakes. But these mistakes are markers for out of the box art techniques and personal growth. It is all about being Alice in a Wonderland of paint and raw, untouched canvas – the possibilities are endless.
Trishla’s big ‘Thank You’: Meister Eckart said, “If the only prayer you say in your life is thank you that would suffice.” One painting of mine is covered with the words Thank You, Thank You, Thank You. I just can’t say it enough. My art comes from an utter completeness and a sense of gratitude. The whole universe conspires and paints with me. So, thank you! – News Courtesy: Times of India