Prafulla Mohanti
Untitled , 2005
Watercolour and pigment on paper
29 7/8 x 22 in. (76 x 55.5 cm.)
2005
2005
‘My painting is rooted in my village culture, which is influenced by meditation and tantra … I was initiated into the world of learning at the age of three when...
‘My painting is rooted in my village culture, which is influenced by meditation and tantra … I was initiated into the world of learning at the age of three when the teacher at the nursery school helped me to draw three perfect circles on the mud floor with a piece of clay chalk, representing Brahma, Vishnu and Maheswar, the Hindu Trinity.
My first visual experience was the round vermillion spot, the red bindu, on my mother’s forehead. Later on I watched vivid sunsets and sunrises. Shalagrams, little oval stones, were worshiped by mother, and the forms used in the village are mostly circular. The circle has been ingrained into my system and has moulded my thoughts. The lotus of my childhood has undergone changes through abstraction, from a circle to a point, bindu. Absolute abstraction makes it disappear to shunya, nothing. From this nothingness life begins again and becomes everything, the total universe. For me, colour is life and life is colour. There is no life without colour.’
(Prafulla Mohanti, Kalakriti Art Gallery, Hyderabad, 2005, unpaginated.)