In the 70s, Arpita Singh faced a creative block. She felt there was something wrong with her technique. So the next eight-odd years went into a kind of practice session. Lines and dots filled her canvas, as she went back to basics. “I was in the process of unlearning and relearning, like how a child practices handwriting,” the 85-year-old artist says. Slowly the lines gave way to random strips of colours, till her figurative canvas emerged in the 80s. The works created during this “experimental period”, appeared in an exhibition in New York in 2017, aptly titled, Tying Down Time. Singh’s recent works are on display at the Vadehra Art Gallery in Delhi, titled Meeting, till March 14.
11 March 2023
