Carving life into colours!

A painter and a poet rolled into one, Kiran Chopra prefers to call art her home. A National Award-winner and the woman behind innumerable acclaimed exhibitions, Kiran Chopra is known for her ability to use the knife to carve her images on the canvas and paper that is normally black or white. In these black and white images, the viewers find the missing colours of their life.

But in her current series, Kiran Chopra moves away from her style to create a riot of timeless colours on the canvas. These works are the result of the black, white and grey dimensions of society today that seem to have made us lose our life’s colours.
And the topic chosen by Chopra is again one that the artist would normally not delve into – Mythological Love Sagas. The thinker that Chopra is, the current exhibition is much more thought-provoking than what meets the eye.

Let us begin with the word Love… Love is an eternal phenomenon, an undying one, a Phenomenon that lasts through centuries and overcomes the impact of everyday chaos and calamities that may strike us. Looking at the current scenario where unhappiness, poverty and now its offshoot terrorism has coloured the society red, artist Kiran Chopra chooses to wield her carving knife and carves on the canvas, images of mythological love sagas that will break through the cloud and bring to the fore the silver lining that love is the best thing to happen to us today, globally. Through the pure, non-materialistic, sacrificing and tolerant nature of the mythological characters, Kiran Chopra wants the future to come from the learning of the past.

The carving technique seems to reflect that the woman is a creator and a mother who can even use the destructive knife as a medium to create. She carves her paintings to give them an extra dimension coming out of the canvas to speak their tale.

As though to signify that the love between the mythological characters will add colour to our life when we emulate them, the painter who normally chooses black and white as the colours for her works, has gone in for colour, this time.

Says she, “I am conveying love sagas of our Gods because their form of love is diminishing between the people in the world. The sacrificial love of Sita and Lord Rama, the magnetic love of Radha and Lord Krishna, the true love of Shakuntala and Dushant, Damyanti and Nala.. these love sagas are so beautiful that it more than touches a chord in your heart.

As it is said.. Every artist dips her brush in her own soul, and paints her own nature into her works.