Lodh Shantu was born in Kolkata, India in 1968. He now currently lives and works in Delhi, India and specialises in painting. In 1993 he earned a B.F.A. at Shantiniketan in West Bengal, India. In 1995 he earned his M.F.A. at Shantiniketan in West Bengal, India. His work has been seen at the following exhibitions:
| Group Exhibitions | ||
| 2010 | The Drifters | Gallery Beyond, Mumbai, India |
| 2009 | The Drifters | Art Konsult, New Delhi, India |
| Classic Colonial Tales | Anant Art, India | |
| 2007 | No title | Newark Museum, Newark. USA |
He says,
“Growing up and living in this world of unjustified conflicts and contradictions, successes and failures…
My earlier works were quite reactive, in the sense that I reacted with craving and aversion towards the object of my expression in my artworks, which made me feel confident about their choice, but definitely frustrated me as the goal was to spread the similar political subjectivity all around. This practice did produce many eye-catching, hard-hitting projects as in public art projects, photographs, videos, posters and performance…
The previous series of paintings were called Classic Colonial Tales, they were mostly black and white, oil on canvas, and quite large in size, created by juxtaposing my family photographs and pictures of Queen Victoria downloaded from the net.
Thereafter I started attending 10-day Vipassana courses, which gave, rise to new esthetic questions and inspirations.
This gave birth to the ongoing series of painting. These are again black and white, gouache on paper. I was inspired by psychedelic art, Buddhist art and Chinese landscape painting. This ongoing series is not a critic as my earlier works were but emphasizes the meditative/hallucinatory aspect of painting. I take photographs of these and mirror them to produce an effect of near symmetry, near balance and the slowness of Intelligent Dance Music by painting in very thin layers. I have intentionally removed color from the paintings to attain an essence closer to Chinese landscape painting, which reduced distraction and seduction; I have also removed linear narratives which were quite central to my earlier works to produce a kind of Now and here, where the mind would not meander into the Past or Future. I am in a transition, as the ongoing experiments in art and sustained meditation in life will definitely lead to unknown quarters of the mind worth exploring as a newcomer to this zone of Mindfulness.”
Please enjoy images of his works:
“Humpty Dumpty II”, watercolor on paper, 26 x 20 in, 2009
Watercolour on paper, 26 x 20 in, 2009
“Man Eater”, watercolour on paper, 26 x 20 in, 2009
“Mask”, watercolor on paper, 26 x 20 in, 2009
