Fair

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This large scale, mixed media piece (charcoal, acrylic paint, watercolor pencil) is composed of two figures, my late maternal grandfather and grandmother, both featured in the same frame and setting, but from separate times and therefore photographs. This work is based on the characters, auras and personalities of the presented figures, and brings to surface the beautiful bond shared between the two.

My grandmother grew up in a very rich household, well known and respected in her locality and recognized for her beauty and grace. However, being highly privileged, she was a humble, compassionate, and generous woman, leading a very simple life later on. My grandfather on the other hand was a very poor man, but rich with value, intelligence and the power to teach. A widely known, loved and respected physics professor at a public college, he taught for most of his life and poured his knowledge into his 3 daughters.

The two were married in a very unexpected manner; my grandmother was stood up at the altar by her ex fiance due to his sudden arrest for petty crimes, a situation that throws a woman into a kind of forced celibacy as per ancient Indian tradition. My grandfather, being the rowdy yet open minded man that he was, stood up and looked to console the disturbed bridesmaid, and decided that he would be the one to marry her. After this point, my grandmother went from living in a mansion to living in a tiny household and led a life of poverty and extreme simplicity, with no complaints and no transitional regret due to my grandfather’s immense love and respect for her.

This work depicts their characters and their personalities, encapsulating their auras through the use of different drawing and compositional techniques. The faded whites of my grandmother’s sari suggest a calm and graceful atmosphere, catalyzed by the strong and deeply rendered reflection in the mirror. My grandmother is dressed in traditional Maharashtrian clothing, the brightly highlighted flower hair piece called a veni is highly symbolic of her rich Maharashtrian culture, extending all the way down to her waist. My grandfather is situated in the background, in an old family house in a district named Dombivli, capturing him in a candid posture shaving his face. The raw gestural mark making aims to portray his constant state of fixation on his curiosity, seeing acts like shaving or daily ritual as purely ritualistic. Middle class and higher class people in India usually pay to have their face shaved, not the case for my grandfather as he had no financial access to luxuries like this. The background symbolizes the simplicity of the setting, the apartment part of a complex of 50 or so families.

A work that later inspired me during the drawing process was John Singer Sargent’s Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, inspiring the free strokes as well as the striking portrait of my grandmother in the mirror. The subtlety of the background in Fair brings the portrait to life, just as is done in Sargent’s piece, using minimal highlights where required.