Passing clouds

Oil on canvas sized 8 by 20 inches( diptych). As I pulled and pushed the paint around, I was slowly departing from realism. But it did give a sense of freedom!

Being a frequent flyer for the last several years, I always take a window seat to enjoy the clouds, their patterns and the light falling on them, making them look like shining jewels.

Well this time, I looked at them with a different perspective..I was bidding a final good bye to Mumbai where I lived for the last few years. We came across many beautiful people during these years.. Some of them made a big difference in our lives while we could bring in some good times in the lives of many. The most missed one being our car driver who tried to teach me the local language Marathi till the last day, which I could never learn ! The irony is that I may not meet any of them( except for one who has promised to visit me) again in my life though I will remember them for ever.

As I looked out of the window at the clouds with a heavy heart, they looked stationary. But in reality, they were passing.

The Transition

This is an abstracted inspiration from a picture taken at the Centennial lake at Columbia, Maryland. Oil on paper sized 9 by 12 inches. I replaced my brushes with my fingers :-)

Autumn or usually called Fall brings to my mind, vivid hues and joyful exuberance. And the name fall is believed to have originated not because of the fall of leaves from the trees, but because it is the season when the sun falls below the equator to spring back up again six months later.Last year at this time I was in Maryland, USA and had the chance to witness a spectrum of colors between the green shades of summer and the dull browns of winter..... Crimson, fiery red,dull orange, pure orange, soft yellows and bright yellows.

The transition in colors during this season is just amazing!.. well I think this transition in nature is very much similar to transitions in our lives.. an inevitable factor...life transitions are mostly challenging and make us learn lessons and grow.. well, let me stop getting philosophical and just enjoy Autumn as it is :-)

Buddha and the Banyan

This painting of part of a Banyan tree is done in oil on paper sized 10'' by 12''. The effort of doing an oil on paper was not as exciting as doing on a canvas, I felt that the paper does not take as much paint.But I received a book of oil painting paper as a gift and I need to use it :-)

This Banyan is special to me because this tree of an age of about more than 100 years, existed in the Monkey park of Basaveshwarnagar, Bangalore, very near to where I have been living for many years now. The tree housed hundreds of monkeys and birds. The residents of our area did not require an alarm clock to wake up in the morning since the birds started chirping as early as 3 am in the morning. (The monkeys were a menace though since they entered our houses and created havoc!) There were a lot of activities going on under this tree. The senior citizens sat down chatting and made new friends everyday.The children played to their hearts' content. There was a free yoga class going on for home makers and ladies were excited to visit the tree for their yoga. There was a laughter club where men and women of all ages met and started laughing with each other to remove stress and improve health! So at any given point of time there were hundreds of people under the tree, using its shade to go through their activities. One night, the tree crashed down completely from the roots. It looked like a huge bird fallen down with its wings spread all around. It was a sad day for all of us, the residents of this area and everyone was out in the morning to pay their "homage" to this tree.

It was amazing to see that the tree chose to come down at night when there were none underneath. It would have been a major disaster if it had fallen on so many people..Buddha preached Ahimsa, a rule of conduct that refrains from causing pain or injury to any living creature.I thought it was a virtue to be practiced by only humans..but how wrong I was!