Hindustan Times
6 October, 2001
Her work immediately transports you to a world far removed from the mundane, but 32-year-old painter Bindu Popli herself is rooted in the affairs of daily life. Happily married to the man of her choice (Hindi scholar Ishaan Mahesh) and a mother of two small kids, aged 6 and 4, Bindu imparts the same contentment to her work.
She, however, likes to attribute the spirituality in her recent paintings, currently on show at the Osho Galleria, to none other than Osho himself. “I have been reading his teachings for the last one year,” says Bindu, a College of Art, Delhi, product, “and the thoughts of his that has inspired me the most is that one should live life in that moment and not burden oneself with unending ambition.” This very reason makes Bindu’s latest exhibition so different from her earlier ones. “My earlier paintings were all about myself, my family and my children, but this time it is about a journey of the self. It could be your journey or mine,” says the artist whose favourite colours are green, yellow and red. Not only are her colours inspired by nature, so were her earlier works.
Bindu’s first art outing, was extremely figurative and in her second (at Triveni in ’94), nature once again bloomed in the form of a woman personified as a flower. “I’ve never really painted tables or chairs,” says Bindu, “my themes come out of my own self.” Naturally then, her next solo in ’97, after her daughter was born, was replete with symbols of a mother and child, and Nar-Naari in ’99 came out of a fulfilling relationship with her husband. And even though she claims that she has no future plans (“I have stopped planning after reading Osho”), one knows for sure that this soft-spoken teacher (she teaches art at DAV, Pitampura) can only go forward from here.
