CHANDRIMA BHATTACHARYA From Santiniketan | Contemporary Indian Artist | Art Documentation

A few words on my artistic journey.
My world of art and artistic journey officially started when I joined Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan in 1982. I specialized in Ceramic Design and History of Art during my B FA and M FA studies till 1989, but later started to draw and paint from 1989, when I married and moved around, looking for a job with my husband.
I mostly do drawings in waterproof inks, though i did quite a few paintings too in acrylic on canvas from 2002-2016. My style in both drawings and paintings have been drawing based, since I enjoy working intricately, describing textures of things with different kinds of strokes of the pen or brush – dots, lines, scribbles, etc.
I’ve always drawn my life, rather themes inspired from my life and the people or issues closest to my heart. Hence, though the style has remained more or less the same, there have been a gradual evolution in the thematic content of my work, as I and my family grew in age and experience. A drastic change came in my life with the death of my husband Art Historian Dr.Dipak Bhattacharyya in 2007. After a long hiatus from work after 2011, during which time I was busy gathering up the pieces of my life and re-arranging them, I started to work again in 2014, and now have shifted gears and am fully occupied drawing again, this time with social issues sometimes, that are killing me inside, because I feel I am viewing the gradual death of the beloved country I grew up in.
The Rabindrasangit ( Lokkhi jokhon ashbe) that accompanies my works as a background score, has been sung by me; and the other rap song that accompanies svene of my working on a drawing, had been composed, arranged and performed by my son Ujan Bhattacharya. It’s called “Tom Rap”, fondly called so after their their favourite math teacher at school Tamal da, on whom he and his friends were making a film, and who they called Tom for some vague reason not known to me.