Art Description
With all the uncertainties looming large, having to close my hotel business and take a hard decision to lay off my staff, this pandemic period really gave me an opportunity to reflect. And like always, I took refuge in art.
I initially started painting on the lids of broken ceramic sauce pots from my hotel during the lockdowns. When Asha Kama (founder of VAST Bhutan and the Project Director for the Paro Airport Beautification & Gallery Project) saw these small marigolds painted on the salvaged ceramic lids, he said they were beautiful and that I must create an installation work using the same medium for the Paro Airport Gallery.
So I picked up my unused hotel plates to be immersed in creating a thing of beauty. As I was working on the plates, I found myself holding and placing them with tenderness and care, the fragility of the ceramic plates naturally seemed to be bringing out that sensibility.
And painting line by line these flowers and petals just flowing from my heart, colors inspired by the sacred marigold representing the illusory nature of everything. Oh, such a deep sense of joy I felt and all the uncertainties just seemed to be empty. I felt, as much as I was trying to create a thing of beauty externally, this feeling that was created in the process, was a thing of beauty after all.
Artwork Specification
Title: Gatey Gatey (Gone Gone)
Year: 2020
Dimension: 244×244 cm
Medium: Conceptual Art on Ceramic Crockery
Not for Sale
About the Artist
Art draws me to her and has drawn the way I live life. A striking memory from childhood is my mother calling me over and over again to come out and join my family during a tour of the Cooch Behar Palace in India. Meanwhile, I was lost in all the details, lines, and motifs- every creeper, vine, and flower, of the murals, and paintings adorning the Palace. When I did come out, my mother asked me what it was that kept me for so long. She tells me I said, “It was this beauty, all together in one place, and now I want to find it everywhere.” I was 9 years old.
I encountered VAST Bhutan as a high- school student, and began understanding the profoundness of art- to look inside myself to find and create beauty everywhere– in the mundane, the routine and the everyday. It has been a blessing for me to serve VAST Bhutan in various capacities, and to be part of such a special organization. I am committed to continue putting my whole life and being into upholding VAST Bhutan’s legacy. This is a legacy that opens up for artists, the vast possibilities of what beauty means.
Born 1979, from Thimphu
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