2016 November « The Artist's Periscope

Prefer the Past, Acrylic, burlap, 70 x 40 inches

Alchemy is occurring at Hammond Harkins Galleries in Columbus, Ohio where Kaveri Raina has opened a portal to another world in her magical first solo at the gallery.

Prefer the Past (detail)

Kaveri, a native of New Delhi, spent part of her childhood in India before relocating to the United States in 2000, and the works on display at Hammond Harkins reflect that dual sense of place. But it would be a disservice to Ms. Raina to say the canvases merely straddle two worlds; They create new ones. By fusing her connections with India, it’s traditions, colors, textures and mythology with a contemporary approach to painting Ms. Raina re-interprets centuries of tradition with fresh eyes, synthesizing a bridge between past and future. The paintings burlap supports, referencing the vessels that transported the rice and staples of her youth and the humble textiles of the marginalized become transportive vessels of another sort under Kaveri’s skillful hand. Painting from both the back and front of the support and using the burlap’s rugged, tactile transparency, Ms. Kaveri evokes the push and pull of past and present, the ephemeral and the visceral, the seen and unseen, the forgotten and the remembered. Her use of overlapping mythical forms, staining of surface and lush layered color further envelope the viewer in a landscape of dreams and memory, awakening the senses and catapulting the viewer from the temporal realm into the sensual beyond.