Evoking a faded memory…

From an old photograph, taken at Gurdaspur, Punjab.

I remember the day vaguely… 4 or 5 years old perhaps, in the garden on a sunny day in the winters. My mum had given me a fresh new ”Sadhna cut” (Sadhna- Indian film actor, had a fringe like the beautiful Audrey Hepburn!). I think my grandmother was coming that day to visit us for a few weeks. There was a big Dahlia flower in the garden and I posed with it! 🙂

I’ve always wanted to work with old childhood and family photographs… there’s something about them, the memories… time captured to relive the moment again and again… the moment passes, days become months, months become years but the photograph remains unchanged, slightly faded perhaps but the moment is frozen in the humdrum of life. Apart from childhood photographs, I would like to work with some old memories, like shoe laces (my dad taught me how to tie them), fascinated me as a child, how two strings tied together looked like a butterfly to me then! Then there’s my first bicycle, learnt how to ride it in the same garden where the dahlia had bloomed!

I bought lots of canvases over the weekend, some very big ones and I plan to start working on these ‘memories’ soon. I have a deadline coming up for a competition at the moment and I need to make something for its theme. I started one work today but not too happy to submit it for this competition (Millennium Bridge on a rainy night- on my website). I have another idea so will work on that now… just need to get it right, aargghhhh!