ROMANCING JOYS

Romancing Joys

Vivacious Daxa is a hedonist and her irrepressible joie de vivre is magnetic. Her elegance, her suave carriage her fine demeanour and her extensive travels (She loves the queen of culture –Paris) speak for her pedigreed interests.
It is therefore in the order of things that I introduce her as a committed artist, finding finesse in the fine art of painting. True to her persona she paints beautiful works full of feasts of happy, fecund life. Life is an eternal feast in her works. Her artworks remind me of the lines from Arthur Rimbaud’s poem Une Saison en Enfer—

…. ma vie était un festin où s'ouvraient tous les coeurs, où tous les vins coulaient.
…..my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed.

Her present exhibition in the prestigious eclectic elegant Museum Art gallery Kala Ghoda Mumbai starts from 15th December2008.
Daxa has drawn inspiration from the great maestros of art from Europe. But only that. She reinterprets their art through her own creative vision. What Daxa does has been a custom among artists to reinterpret the art of the past in their own vision. Francis Bacon’s famous and landmark reinterpretation of the Pope’s portrait by Velazquez titled ‘Study after Velazquez's portrait of Pope Innocent X’ is a case how artists have always been inspired by earlier great artists’ work. Many of our great artists including Souza, Hussain, K.S. Kulkarni, Ram Kumar, et al had been inspired by Western Masters and especially by Pablo Picasso.
She decided to reinterpret works which have music, love, poetry, the romance and mother’s love. Being a woman gives her a large reach to understand life. Daxa’s multifarious role as a woman in a typical Indian family has added meaning to her art. The paintings she has created are mostly celebration of life with mother, child, music, love feminine charms dominating her interest.


Daxa recreates celebration of life scenes generally indoors. At times there is a flat background to the joyous drama of life that she enacts. Daxa uses a muted colour palette. Her colours are nearer to earth chromes. By using limited palette she is able to shift attention to the drama enacted by the characters rather than to the surroundings. Her figures are positioned outside of an identifiable time or place and you may relate to them irrespective of your milieu.
Daxa relishes the use of linear design elements to give vibrancy and kinetic power to the negative space. Often vertical and horizontal elements intercede with gusto. Sometimes she juxtaposes these linear designs with a relief of flat colour there by generating movement and rest. Daxa works in oils on canvas to impart a rich body to the painterly surface.
She does not like to detail the facial features of the characters in her paintings. She wants to create a universal feeling of being a woman, a child, or a mother hence the redundancy of facial details, gestures and stances. You feel at places that her figures have ethnic Indian identity. This is not unusual keeping in mind her strong love for her own rich Indian culture and her enriching experience of being a mother and wife.




Victor Vijay Kumar
3rd November 2008