Artist Taniya Vaidya in conversation with Abhishek Gurung unveils the secrets of her khadi canvas
Taniya Vaidya finds inspiration from everywhere, soaking in the raw nature or taking a hike up the mountains. About the method for creating her palette, she said it is an ancient process and she has hardly tweaked the methods. little wonder then that she works with natural vegetable dyes on khadi.
She learnt the traditional kalmakari paintings (handpainted fabrics) in rural Andhra Pradesh and ajrakh dyeing (a block printing technique) in Kutch, Gujarat. A graduate from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda and Rhode Island School of Design, Taniya is all set to showcase her collection in the Capital.
Her paintings are related to the free spirit of women basking in nature, even enjoying solitary moments. Taniya uses her hand to daub her concepts and makes bamboo as a kalam. An ecologically sensible person, khadi becomes her canvas. “Painting may sound easy but it is a long stressful process and only the one with great patience can accomplish something good from it,” she told us.
Taniya gets her inspiration from her love for nature. But she is equally influenced by films of Bimal Roy and paintings of Tagore, where the landscape and individual come together. She was always inclined to paint nature but looked at it in an abstract way this time. She struggled through dye- making as it was indeed a difficult task, “as you wash thecloth with dung and dry it on the roof seven times a day.” She gets the raw materials and grinds them for colours. It seems colours have mood swings as well and enriching them takes time and patience. “It is a very methodical process and is also physically challenging,” she told us. She further said, “I was simply working on it while still training as the workshop was located in a rural area in Andhra Pradesh but living in a city with no sources of river, making dye is a difficult task.”
Right after her graduation she had her first exhibition in 2005 and two shows in France. She was invited by UNESCO and CCI to make a presentation at the International Workshop on Natural Dyes, Hyderabad November, 2006. She uses hand painting, block printing, and textile dyeing to create contemporary paintings.