Painter’s persona

Birds, beasts, trees, rivers etc. have found a place in her paintings with loving attention. Their essences and rhythms having been made a part of her, with her waving strokes on canvas.
Amarjit Chadha, an artist with a distinctive style of her own, admits, “I work with oil and my technique involves dipping the rope in oil colour, which I use instead of a brush.�
Born in 1931, Amarjit studied at J.J.School of Arts, Bombay and obtained a Diploma in Fine Arts. She is one of the few pioneer artists to participate in the first national exhibition of Lalit Kala Academy held in Bombay. And starting with that, she has regularly participated in solo and group shows organised by the Academy and other art organisations in different parts of India and abroad. Apart from the National Gallery of Modern Arts and Lalit Kala Academy, her works are displayed in private collections in Australia, Canada, France, UK and the USA.
“Line no doubt has given clarity and dynamic rhythm to my paintings. It has suggested perhaps, the mass or solid form to which tone gives full spatial expression,� says Chadha. Add colour to these attributes and the easiest explanation of its function regards it as an enhancement of the verisimilitude of the painting. This use of colour might be called natural, but it is far from being the only use. From the painting it seems that the artist pays more attention to the intensity of tone that various colours have in relation to the general light scheme of the painting. This involves regulating the colours to conform to a restricted scale. The dominant tone of the painting is selected perhaps arbitrarily, but more often in conformity with some style or workshop tradition and all the other colours are scaled up or down to a restricted distance from the dominant tone.
Lastly, it would not be irrelevant to mention that on exchanging a few words with the quiet Amarjit Chadha, one may be pleased with her artistic persona. Her obvious hesitance to speak of herself and her preoccupations are endearing.
“I like to go out to shopping in Preet Vihar and love to spend time with my nieces. Life after all should be enjoyed,� she says. Her temperament is evident in her compositions, an indirection of statement it seems, wherewith the explicit catchy references to life on surface are set aside and only the purest and the most perfect form remains.