Chemould Prescott Road

Self-doubt has been the backbone of almost all my work till date.

In these large paper works , we see this self-doubt, choreographed in ‘studio- dramas’ as extreme  gestures of anxiety, or as energetic actions of entering empty spaces  –  to  create.

The physical energy of these artist figures is stolen from the Samurai of the 19th century Japanese printmakers. Their obsessive lunacy is borrowed from the world of sport and its desperate moments of winning and losing.

Watercolour plays an important part in these calibrations. The luminous density of watercolour, the staining, it’s corruption by charcoal and the apparent erasure as water works its way through image… is the language of this performance

The erasures were carried forward into the suite of photographic works in which created images are erased , playing with memory and stain… stain as on paper and on skin.

The fabric-mounts with their almost geometric painted shapes, finally create a circuit where these marks, stains and erasures become a design, constructing a calm distance from the restless self.

Though enacting a pantomime of suffering, there is irony and a self-mocking spirit conscious about the limitations of creativity. Yet, this is clearly a reverent space, nurturing the idealist/romantic/comic vision of an artist as the heroic ‘exemplary sufferer’

Anju Dodiya