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LIMITS OF THEIR EXISTENCE
Painting for me is a personal and meditative process through which I distil and clarify my feelings and reactions to the people and events around me.

I was brought up in the town of Agra in India by my English mother and Indian father. In hindsight I realise that this multicultural family environment played a formative role in the mental processes behind my work. College life at the National... LIMITS OF THEIR EXISTENCE
Painting for me is a personal and meditative process through which I distil and clarify my feelings and reactions to the people and events around me.

I was brought up in the town of Agra in India by my English mother and Indian father. In hindsight I realise that this multicultural family environment played a formative role in the mental processes behind my work. College life at the National Institute of Design was an inspiring experience and I find that my training in Graphic Design and Illustration lingers on in my paintings.

After leaving India in 1987, my family and I moved to live in Nepal, Thailand, Hong Kong and most recently England. Each new destination brought with it the heightened sensitivity and curiosity that only that kind of unfamiliarity can bring. I found myself enthralled by new stimuli, visual imagery and differing practices of familiar religions: the sight of blood sacrifices made to deities in Nepal - native to Tantric practices yet unfamiliar to an Indian eye; the Buddhist imagery and use of gold leaf in Thailand; & the Ancestor paintings, seals and votive papers burnt in offering to the Gods in Hong Kong. Assimilating and internalising these stimuli over time provided strong inspiration for my work in the "Duality", "Mantra" and "Ancestor" series, which I exhibited in Hong Kong and India in a series of exhibitions between 1997 and 2002.

While each move in the East led to an enhancement and reinforcement of Buddhist and Hindu imagery and symbolism, the move to England provided a sharp contrast in terms of light, colour and subject matter. Gone were the vibrant colours, the hustle and the heat of the Orient and instead inspiration came from the mellow shades of autumn and the textures and light filtering through the stained glass windows of cathedrals. These new influences came through in my first London exhibition - "Identity in Abstraction" in 2004.

Increasingly since moving to England I have found that my awareness and perspective of events has been shaped largely by how they have been reported in the media. The awe-inspiring force and tragic consequence of the Tsunami, the July bombings on the underground, the horrors of the war in Iraq, the heart-rending story of a little boy left bleeding to death on a door step... all these were made both immediate and personal by intense and intrusive media coverage and provided the inspiration for my subsequent "Out of the Blue" series in 2005.

My current series, "Limits of Their Existence" reflects my response to the people and situations that impact my day-to-day life but is centred and anchored around the symbolically complex Kalachakra Tantra. The ten stacked syllables of the Kalachakra represent its 3 aspects; the external, dealing with cosmology and astronomy; the internal, representing the subtle energy systems of the individual's mind and body interrelationships and the alternative, dealing with the actual Kalachakra deity. These seemingly separate themes seem connected and resonant in my mind in the way they represent the lives I observe around me.

I have come to realise that long before I pick up a paintbrush, the thoughts, moods and emotions behind my work are already gaining form inside me. My canvas becomes a story that takes form organically rather than ever being a planned composition and the satisfaction of seeing my internal thoughts translated into painting is an exciting and fulfilling experience…

Angeli Sowani, London

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