Paradigm Shift

PARADIGM SHIFT

ILLUMINATI - 60"x36"

Brilliant in color and rich in texture, Brinda Chudasama Millers’ latest paintings are studies in Abstract Art. These highly accomplished works, with their strong rhythms and shifting perspectives, represent a culminating point in the artist’s ongoing quest for self-expression.

Brinda made her entry into the sphere of art more than twenty years ago when she joined the Sir J.J. School of Art as a student in the Department of Textile Design. There, she was introduced to the principles of Design, the rules to be observed for achieving balance and symmetry, as also the importance of patterning through repeated motifs. At first, it seemed very interesting, but, with time, Brinda’s unconventional temperament began to tire of what appeared to be a confining approach.

She left India to join the Parsons School of Design on the East Coast of the U.S.A. She found the environment much more conducive for her creative impulses. But soon, her restlessness made her move from the field of Design to that of Painting. Her earlier training, however, did leave its imprint on her sensibilities, enriching the compositional constituents of her painted works.

As a painter she has been engaged in experimenting with different permutations and combinations of form, colour, surface and scale. Initially, form had primacy in her paintings and her works were figurative in intent. Gradually, the figures lost their corporeality and were reduced to outlines, and, over time, they became redundant in her painterly configurations. More than the figures, their surroundings claimed the attention of the artist. And thus, her paintings began to depict landscpaces. Seldom did they portray actual landscapes, several hinted at landmarks in the city of Mumbai, particularly the different architectural features of the now defunct large conglomerations of textile mills, with their cavernous sheds and rising chimneys. Once these very halls with their textile looms powered the industrial growth of the city, playing a pivotal role in its prosperity. Today, they are dark blots casting ominous shadows on the future of the cityscape.

Brinda’s other landscapes are dredged from memories of travels to distant and exotic lands and fleeting impressions of their unusual geological features, their gentle people and the grandeur of their monuments. Devoid of descriptive detail these elements are hardly identifiable in her paintings. They surface as random shapes and motifs to modulate her works.

It is evident that the artist’s journey over these years has been fruitful and eventful, its smooth passage occasionally marked by disjunctions which either cause, or are caused by, modifications in the dynamics of her painterly language. They represent paradigm shifts that lead to periods of exploration during which she navigates her way through a plethora of influences, ideas and imaginary formats. Each of these periods has its own distinctive character and denotes a particular phase in her career.

Brinda’s latest works can be interpreted as a new phase wherein her preoccupations are now centred on principles of Abstract Art. Form has lost its relevance in her landscapes: trees, houses, mountains and figures assert their presence in vestigial lines – as a straight line, an angle, an arc or an ellipse, or other minimal geometrical devices. They continue to exercise a structural function – primarily that of a scaffolding that supports the many layered welter of colours and their interplay of assonant and dissonant tonalities. The artist manipulates her colours with confidence, deftly contrasting splashes of colour with areas that have been stripped, ridged or enhanced with gold and silver leaf. Her strategies include found objects -- bits of textured cloth, wire mesh, wood shavings, colourful buttons and metal strips. All these diverse materials are strung together and tightly held in a coherent composition.

Although she employs a wide and varied palette, the colour harmonies in her paintings display shared sensibilities, unifying her works as a group in time and space. The canvases gleam and glint gold and silver through a adumbrations of deep mysterious browns, loamy umbers and iridescent greens. Bright hues of turquoise blue, dense swathes of indigo and ubiquitous shades of tumultuous reds impart a liveliness to her works.

Brinda’s paintings with their new approach will be showcased under the apt nomenclature “Paradigm Shift”. Clearly, her paintings with their conscious denial of form, their preoccupations with colour, particularly its lyrical qualities as well as its aesthetic values, are no longer to be seen as abstract landscapes. They are now chromatic symphonies with an ineffable inner resonance.

- Dr. Saryu Doshi