This painting is inspired by the occasion of the artist turning 45 years young. The artist’s name “Naina”, means “eyes’ in the Hindi language, which is the primary language of her home country. As a child, even through college, the most-doodled artefact on her notebooks used to be a human eye. She’s always wanted to paint an eye, but never quite got around to it, till now.
The painting also represents awakening, opening of the third-eye and energetic progression. The artist feels she has grown more in the last two years combined than in the previous 42 years. Despite being quite self-aware, open to learning and moving forward repeatedly, relentlessly, resourcefully.
When rotated 90 degrees, the painting could also be interpreted as the “yoni”, which is a Sanskrit word representing the Goddess Shakti, symbolizing creation, regeneration, and the union of feminine and masculine energies, in keeping with the theme of the series that this painting is a part of. “Yoni” is also a Sanskrit word for vulva or vagina, translating to “sacred cave” or “sacred space”.
The artist uses acrylic markers to hand-paint each artwork. Acid-free gesso is applied to the canvas before she begins the painting. Some paintings have pencil sketches on top of which the synthetic polymer paint is layered. Each painting is photographed prior to the application of varnish. Several coats of high-gloss liquid, UV resistant, museum-grade, acid-free, non-yellowing varnish is applied to the painting, and it is finished with several layers of permanent matte varnish spray, similar in grade to the liquid varnish.
About The Series
The growing discourse on gender, sexuality and identity, is what brought forth this series for the artist. While the online world can seem as polarizing and swinging between the two extremes of centuries-old misogyny and newly-minted misandry, real people in real life continue to collaborate and build lives of magical energy. After posting a couple of short videos on her Instagram page, and after reading through and responding to thousands of comments, the artist feels like the fervor has never been this in-her-face. She feels the vibrations from women who seem to be coming into their own, developing relationships with their divine and sacred selves, choosing to get to know themselves better and unlearning the conditioning of needing a man in their lives. At the same time, men seem to be coming into their own as well. Breaking free from patriarchal strong holds, exploring their spirituality and honoring the feminine within their masculine.
The lived experiences of both the feminine and the masculine are colliding. And not always in beautiful ways. Regardless, there’s an energy and a vibration around the artist that she has not experienced before in her life.
She aims to bring forth these vibrations in her paintings for this series.