ARPITA SINGH (B. 1937)

Arpita Singh spent four years working in the Calcutta and Delhi Weavers service centre and her paintings draw partly on the stylistic devices of Kantha embroidery. Sacrificing baseline and perspective for figural relationships and pattern, these works very much quote the textile tradition. Often incorporating familiar, everyday images into her work, Singh frequently numbers them, as one would a shopping list, in a clever emphasis of their banality. 'Memories and mappings of dislocations and discoveries, of nostalgia and pain, of excitement and discovery have surged through her images. But Arpita Singh also responds to other dynamics in the world, to interface between time and space, between history and the present context. In fact, she absorbs the complexities of the world and represents them in her own distinctive way through the sensuous use of paint and brush, signalling joy, wonder, menace, and melancholy in an intricate kaleidoscope of human emotions.' (Ella Datta, 'Of History, Context and Location,' Picture Postcard, exhibition catalogue, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2006)