BEENA PRADHAN

BEENA PRADHAN

Two wonderful things happened to me when I started painting a decade and a half ago. The primary source of my happiness was that, being self-taught, I did not have to stay within a studious frame of reference. And the second was the realization that the restrictions imposed by a physical setback were not a cause for despondence at all. It made me more determined, opened up my creative vistas, and made my artistic journey a joyous unfettered one. 

My experimentation has been with a number of mediums, (watercolour, dry pastel, charcoal, oil and acrylic) as well as with a thematic representation. This has progressed over the years, from portraiture in its purest sense, to capturing the moodscape of India in its vastness, to my current somewhat more complex, figurative, philosophical passage. I endeavour to search every day for a meaningful métier and that leads me to experiment with form, colour, the effect of sound.

The focus in my current work which is rendered in acrylic and in Indian ink is to characterize and capture the lust for life that street musicians display and the musical, oceanic and empathetic reverberations that my emancipated and powerful women capture and convey to the tangential male. If there is a dominance of cobalt blue and cadmium red, it is because they endorse the strong sound that my musicians display when they play their hearts out into lonely nights with scant applause, but plenty of aplomb. These primary bursts of colour and other treatments with ultramarine and ochre as also in monochrome, abet in the creation of the feminine mystique. 

My own passion for the piano ekes out different shades of fervour when I paint. My quest continues apace to unravel the machinations of hue, texture and the human psyche. 

"Rated as one of the most enlightened new-generation painters of Bengal , in large part because of her extreme devotion and constant effort to explore new horizons of aesthetic thought and imagination." — Galley Joie 

Conferred the Best Oil Painting Award at the Academy of Fine Arts, 2004, Beena Pradhan's work graces 

collections in the major metropolitan cities of India and in London and New York.