Seller's presentation : Lisa Chakrabarti, Fine Artist

I nurture a lifelong passion for drawing and painting with reverence for natural subjects that are often ephemeral in spirit. From age two, when I drew a wobbly but recognizable'bunny', I have since produced a body of work in diverse media: oil, acrylic, egg tempera, pastel, watercolor, charcoal, graphite, colored pencil and photography. My eventual discovery of Oriental brush and ink painting carried my art to new directions and, since 1996, has been my preferred medium. I generally work ‘a la prima’, that is, without preliminary drawings or sketches, using immediacy and many years of honed skills to keep the lines pure.

Working in Chinese ink (sumi in Japanese) one often encounters surprises. The typical Xuan paper of China and Japanese washi, usually made from mulberry pulp, are unsized. Thus, capillary action within the fibers allows the ink to spread wildly across the paper. But the challenge to control the brush and ink also affords an enormous range of technical possibilities. A single brush stroke can yield infinite shades of gray that accentuate the interplay of shadow and light, form and void. Each stroke is permanent and final: no corrections are made. In this respect, an ink painting is a window into the artist’s soul.