Have nature and Earth ever spoken to you through paintings? If your answer is no, then you have to meet Bengaluru-based Abhigna Kedia, a budding resin artist, and gaze upon her work to experience this feeling for yourself. Abhigna, who believes that painting helps her find inner peace, holds an Advanced Diploma in Art and Design from Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology and a Bachelor's in Visual Arts from Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath. Recently, she unveiled a few of her beautiful paintings on the theme Between Heaven and Earth.
She says, "These paintings showcase the connection between my emotions and the five elements of nature — Earth, fire, water, air and space. The specialty of my paintings, which are related to nature, is that I not only choose the typical blue or green colours, I use metallic colours like bronze, gold, silver and so on as well. Apart from creating resin art on wood, I have also painted on candles. This is the new experiment I have carried out with this theme. I also carried out several experiments using different pigments, techniques, inks and oils."
Sustainable medium, much?
Abhigna creates her art piece on wood as the resin settles in the centre of the wood piece smoothly. Thus, she uses either round or semicircular-shaped wood. Sometimes, she also paints on rectangular wooden pieces. In this case, the rectangular wooden piece is covered with a canvas. She says, "We can either pour the paint first and then the resin or the resin is poured before the paint. I feel that resin is a sustainable form of art because one can paint as many layers as they want to. There can be around seven to eight layers painted on the wood. This results in an end product that shines brightly and looks new. If there is a piece of useless wood, then I use it to create art. I also reuse old plastic bottles and cups while pouring the paint. Resin art cannot be recycled, but I try to practice the concept of recycling and reusing."
Before Abhigna tried resin art, she also explored oil painting, traditional water paints, ink and pen. But she finds resin art to be very interesting as one needs to counter exciting challenges and the end product that one gets is usually incredible. She says, "I personally connect a lot with resin art because I see a reflection of myself in it. However, there are lots of challenges that artists have to face if they intend to take up this art form. Since resin is a polymer, it only has a 45-minute working window. That means, if I mix resin and hardener, then I will have only 45 minutes to work on the painting. After which, it will start curing. Apart from this, the painting catches dust pretty quickly. Once the painting dries up, it has to be covered in a way that no dust settles on it. There should be no ventilation, fan or air conditioner working when we make resin art. Any dust that deposits on this painting will show up as soon it dries."
Abhigna's paintings have been exhibited in Mumbai, Dubai and a few other places. The young artist's paintings are so beautiful that the viewer gets lost in it and can interpret their thoughts and imagination through her paintings
