An artist’s quest for simplicity

The shape of an object is not just a form for young Shefali Shah. For her, it reflects life around her. Shefali, a young post graduate student from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Vadodara, is displaying her works at the Contemporary Art Gallery.

Shefali paints human faces, animals, birds, toys as well characters from the bedtime stories. They all speak about a time and carry a humour within themselves which the artist shows as a reaction to the particular time without making the subject of her paintings as pre-conceptualised ones. The spontaneity with which young Shefali reacts makes her work expressive. The faces have large, round, ball like eyes, flared up nostrils and large open mouths. The artist also uses thick, dark lines to edge such forms that creates an expression in itself. Though Shefali explains that the subjects of her paintings hardly has any significance, it is the childlike observation that she aims to convey. There is hardly any message or a story to support the idea, but her characters are built up individually and carry an independence in their appearance.

Shefali uses mix media to paint what she observes in front of her, whether it is her pet dogs or the friends. Even the titles of her work reveal a simplicity with names such as ‘companion’ and ‘outdoors’. Among the present series, some works create an atmosphere that arrests the viewer. One such work is ‘strong like him’ where the artist expresses a wish clearly through a relation between an animal and a human being. Another work has a caricatured human figure in the middle surrounded by various fantasised forms appearing in toy-like shapes. They are houses, birds, animals and a curved long road leading to nowhere. The artist adds a meaning here with a small plant with dried up leaves in dark lines.

Shefali’s work seems to be inspired by the famous saying by master painter Picasso, "The quest is more important than the finding".

Compiled from local news media