Can an artist create a painting while thumping out foot tapping music simultaneously?
Delhi based artist Ashwini Kumar Prithvivasi did precisely that when he created a painting with his palms while rhythmically beating the paint board and the board where the colours were mixed. All this in full public glare another of his bold experiments was making a painting with his phone’s torch light in thin air; the painting was captured by light sensors of cameras, this too was done in front of an audience.
Prithivivasi once created a painting on a cloth canvas attached on the floor by driving a Segway over it, with the wheels acting as a paint brush; this too was done in front of onlookers.
This unique artist prefers creating his artwork in full public view and never hesitates to innovate “Having started off as a signboard painter during my school days I got used to working in the open” he says.
Prithvivasi’s mostly works on acrylic paintings and his works are characterised by very bright colours “I enjoy the process of making a painting, I like to play with colours, I throw colours, play with them and eventually a theme emerges out of it. Unlike other artists who would work on an outline, a theme, a preconceived idea and then built it, I do not always start off with a theme.”
Faces are a recurring theme in his works, he explains his fascination with these “I find faces to be very interesting, it is the most important part of the body and people spend the most time and money on their faces. Being someone who teaches art I have to look at the faces of the students a lot.”
Apart from painting Prithvivasi also does photography, music, writes poems and is currently penning a book “If you have something to say you could express yourself through any of the art forms, it’s just like satiating one’s hunger, hunger can be satiated through any type of food sometimes we eat rice sometimes Rotis similarly sometimes I express myself with photography, sometimes with paintings, sometimes with poetry and so on”
