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THE BHARAT JYOTI, SUNDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1970


[[image]]

The 'graphical' form of a cage by artist Zarina.


At first sight she looks almost unapproachable-with that austere, faraway look in her eyes. But when you get to know her and strike a conversation, the girlish effervescence in her comes leaping out. That's Zarina, an artist from Delhi whose first one-man show of graphics in Bombay is on at the Pandole Art Gallery.

Her work has wood textures for a basis. With imaginative manipulation of white space with straight lines so much a part of wood, she achieves instinctive, impressive forms. They are pieces of wood arranged in various shapes.

How does Zarina go about her work? She begins with no preconception. It all starts with the 'mass'. And she goes through a delicate process of elimination  until the 'bare essentials' are arrived at. Forms develop as she goes on. The end product "in fact is an unpredictable" much like life itself.

Zarina has been seriously involved with graphics for about 8 years now. Before that [[image]] she had a spell with painting. She gave it up for graphics, much as she earlier gave up mathematics, her subject at the University. 

She may give up graphics too - "the moment I feel I have nothing more to convey through this medium." She wouldn't go back to painting, any way [[anyway]]. "One should move forward, never backwards" - that's her philosophy. 

"Nobody should stick to an art out of compulsion." That's the mistake ('if I can put it that way') most of the painters commit, she says. And "that leads to a process of reproduction instead of creativity."

Zarina was born at Aligarh- where she completed her studies. She was introduced to graphics in Bangkok. There she studied 'wood-cuts' for the three years at the Academy of Fine Arts. She later studied the art at Atelier-17 in Paris and the St. Martin's School of Arts, London.