Exhibition
Shanti Panchal: In the Mind's Eye
16 December 2006 to 18 February 2007
Shanti Panchal is a leading London-based Indian artist with an international reputation. He won the 1991 National Portrait Gallery/BP Portrait Award, was Artist-in-Residence at the National Gallery, London in 1994, and was a 2003 nominee for the UK Asian Achievers Awards. Executing only a few pictures each year, Panchal's fascinating and monumental watercolours successfully unite an Indian spirit with western form, creating a timeless quality with universal appeal.
Executing only a few pictures each year, Panchal's fascinating and often monumental watercolours successfully combine an Indian spirit with a western form, creating a timeless quality with universal appeal. Images, colours and surfaces create simple yet powerful relationships and can be enjoyed for both visual quality and narrative content, often based on familiar landscapes, architecture and friends, and have a sense of longing..
For twenty five years Panchal has worked solely in watercolour, but has pushed beyond its traditional limits to a new 21st century approach. His method is laborious: after outlining the composition in pencil on thick hand-made French paper he builds up more than a dozen layers of colour wash. This repeated layering of paint is like a meditation exercise: it makes the colours strong and luminous, and although the forms are deliberately kept flat the surface is vibrant with strong colour.
Padabhishek - Jain Ceremony
watercolour
Born in Gujerat, he studied at the Sir JJ School of Art, Bombay, and later at the Byam Shaw School of Art, London. He has exhibited widely through the UK and India. His work is in many public, private and corporate collections in this country and abroad.
Dr Atul Shah will give a talk "Compassion and Creativity" explaining how the painting 'Padabhishek' (Jain Ceremony) opens a window to the ancient Jain culture, which now has 35,000 members living in the UK. Dr Shah FRSA is Chief Executive of Diverse Ethics, Colchester, and former Editor of Jain Spirit magazine. The talk will be on Wednesday 7 February at 7pm; ring (01245) 605700 to book.