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Talented artist

Latent talent has a way of surfacing itself in surprising forms, and mostly it happens at a stage when one is at the cross-roads of decision-making. Lalit Kala Akademi award-winner, Zarina, had never thought when she took her degree in mathematics from Aligarh University that she would one day turn wholeheartedly to painting.
Her marriage to an official of the External Affairs Ministry brought to her the opportunity to discover herself. She first took to portrait painting but, later, when her husband was posted to Bangkok, she changed her medium. "I found that portrait painting is not my line, and I took to woodcuts and this really is my medium where I give expression in a most affective way," she says.
[[Photograph of Zarina Hashmi, captioned underneath "Zarina"]]
Later, her husband was transferred to Paris where Zarina felt she "must take the opportunity of developing what little I knew about this school of art." She first studied at the well-known 'Atelier 17' with SW Hayter. Later, she went to work in the St. Martin's School of Art in London.
In the early stages, Zarine played with colours in her compositions but "slowly I came to discard colours and now I don't use them at all", she says. She works in monotones and mainly with nature.
All her etchings and woodcuts are printed and cut and arranged by her in her own studio. She has held many exhibitions abroad and some of her works are hung at museums in Brussels, Paris and London. "Contemporary graphics have come to hold a place of their own in any collections." she says.
The quiet, almost shy, Aligarh-born Zarina has a dual personality. As Mrs Zarina Hashmi, she is a self-effacing person and almost passes unnoticed but amidst her work tools she develops before one's eyes into a striking personality with a mind of her own and sharp intelligence.
Zarina has held two exhibitions in India -- she will be holding her third this week.
India are unsure of themselves we sometimes indulge in borrowed motions, borrowed emotions perhaps, without real involvement.I confessed that as a spectator I had felt this to be true both in 1965 and recently after the tragedy of Ahmedabad. But, again I agreed with Zarina when she pointed out that the artist shared the non-involvement with many others in the creative ranks.
"Perhaps we Indian artists take ourselves too seriously" Zarina smiled. "After all art is a part of life. Life is what makes art. Your loneliness, your despair, your hopes. I communicate in every way, and one gesture is art. THe vital part of life is living. For me art is an inner necessity, but even without it life would go on. When I work I look inside myself. Isn't that what this kind of work is, looking inwards, focussing on a smaller and smaller point, until it becomes all important, to the exclusion of everything else?"
But she admitted that the artist could not survive in complete isolation with his work. "As Sartre said there has to be the "other" to whom you relate. I think the greatest influence on me was that of Brancusi, the Rumanian sculptor who worked in Paris and died in 1957. His work in stone, metal or wood had the powerful elemental quality, the reduction to essentials."
'What kind of work will I do in the future?" There was no hesitation in Zarina's answer. "What I feel is relevant these days is technological involvement, working with machines, with light and movement. I want to introduce mechanical things into my work, electric movement, light and shadow, the use of electric light. I want to use new mediums, glass perhaps. As I said before I think one is led to these things. I first used metal, then wood, now I am wondering what next. It may be the use of light in relief to give a three dimensional effect. The one thing I am sure of is that it will be a new medium for me."