The environment inspires her paintings

Belonging to an army family, painter Tenaz Rao often had to move from one country to another and this reflected in her art

Art, specially painting, is something that started off simply as a hobby for Tenaz Rao. Her parents enrolled her in classes as a child and for a long time, she never even realised that she wanted to make a career of it. It was in 1978 that she began pursuing painting professionally, and has only grown as an artist since. She got a diploma in commercial art from Abhinav Kala Vidyalaya, Pune and started working as a freelance artist taking up projects that interested her. For a week starting today, she will be exhibiting a few of her paintings at the Gyaan Adab Centre in Kalyani Nagar. Living in the Cantonment area in Pune, a lot of her work reflects the lush green environment that she is surrounded by. Just as she gets ready for her exhibition, TGS speaks to her about what inspires her work and the challenges that she faces.

The exhibition is going to be a collection of abstract and semi-realistic work in acrylic. It explores the world of abandoned buildings and the power that nature around us emits. The use of colour throughout the series is striking, while it reveals powerful visual narratives too. “My work has always been inspired by the area or city that I have lived in. If I am able to capture this in my work, it means I will be grab the attention of the people living there,” she explains. When she was in Tejpur, she did an entire series on landscapes and scenery because that is what she was surrounded by. When in Muscat, a lot of her paintings were about birds, rendered in pen and ink. The surroundings tell you a lot about the people and what they like, she feels.

When Tenaz started painting commercially, she did a lot of realistic work and started with watercolours. She then moved to poster colours and eventually to oil paints. Because oil paints took a long time to dry, she moved to acrylic and has been using them as a medium ever since. This way, she is able to churn our paintings and work out faster, she explains. Moving from doing realistic work to abstract was an extremely challenging task, she tells us. There is a lot that is left to the imagination of the onlooker when the work is abstract, and this is something she took time getting used to.

“Nature and the outdoors are my strength when it comes to painting. I am not very good at human forms, and so never even opted for it in college. I love using a lot of colours in my work to help highlight what I feel is important in the image,” she says. The fact that she can work at her own pace and doesn’t have to work with anyone else is a huge plus for her. Tenaz also holds classes and in the future wants to find a way to do social work through her profession, and what she knows best: painting.
salonee.mistry@goldensparrow.com

Originally published on The Golden Sparrow