Mrinal Das is from Guwahati, Assam. He recently completed his BFA in Painting from the Government College of Art and Crafts, Guwahati, Assam. He is currently based in Delhi, where he is pursuing an M.A. in Visual Art at Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University. Though he now lives in Delhi, his artistic practice remains deeply rooted in his upbringing in the village of Bhattapara, a place rich in natural beauty and undergoing rapid change. He is especially influenced by the daily lives and struggles of the farming community in his village, which continue to shape his work. He often finds himself as an eyewitness, a medium, or a spectator in his creative process. His art is an amalgamation of his thoughts and the contemporary circumstances around him. Since childhood, he has been drawn to the environment he grew up in, and as it evolves, he strives to document these shifts through sketching, drawing, painting, and writing. He is trying to preserve contemporary landscapes, nostalgia, emotions and significant incidents from his life and village. Being an introvert, he finds it difficult to express his feelings in words, so visuals are his way of communication. His subjects are often his surroundings, and his visuals realistically depict life around him.
Dipa Moni Patowary practice explores why we are drawn to abstract art, or more precisely, nonrepresentational art. She observes that abstraction engages the brain on multiple levels—through the effort of analyzing style, the associations it evokes, and the emotions it generates. Informed by psychology and neuroscience, she believes that abstract art frees the mind from the dominance of external reality, activating creativity, imagination, and inner states that are otherwise harder to access. Her own attraction to threads and lines comes from childhood memories of growing up in Guwahati, Assam, where the traditional production of muga silk—golden yarn spun from silkworm cocoons—is an inseparable part of the culture. This rootedness in material informs her layered mixed-media practice. She builds her paintings through a process of layering tissue cloth, acrylic, and oil paint, often tearing, pasting, and scratching through surfaces to reveal depth and texture. Patterns and abstract forms introduce structure, while fluid gestures create a counterbalance, resulting in a dynamic tension between order and chaos. This balance reflects both her psychological approach to art and her interest in how the human mind perceives and processes visual experiences. Born in Guwahati in 1978, the artist graduated from Guwahati Art College in 2001 and later pursued psychology at Delhi University in 2020. She has exhibited widely across India and abroad, including Sahitya Kala Parishad, Visual Art Gallery, Lalit Kala Akademi (Delhi), Kala Ghoda (Mumbai), Amdavad ni Gufa (Ahmedabad), and River City (Bangkok). Her works are in private collections, and she has been selected multiple times for the National Exhibition of Lalit Kala Akademi (2020, 2022, 2025). In 2024, she received an award from the State Art Gallery, Hyderabad, and was also selected for the CIMA Award exhibition in Kolkata. Her paintings remain a space where memory, psychology, and material meet—inviting viewers to move beyond representation and explore new inner territories of thought and feeling.
Featuring Image Work by Dipa Moni Potwary
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