Artists showcase their ideas of progress in Hyderabad

Work by Ramesh Gorjala
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

To experiment and to elevate are significant elements of an artist’s creative process. They stay inspired by trying a new medium or material or elevating their art practice to create diverse expressions. Artists Ramesh Gorjala, Priti Samyukta and Pavan Kumar known for their signature styles are navigating challenges to create a new dimension.

Sheen with glass beads

“When you try something new, the energy brings in enthusiasm,” says Srikalahasti-based contemporary artist Ramesh Gorjala. Known for Kalamkari paintings of mythological characters, he is incorporating coloured glass beads into his works for a new show in 2025.

Ramesh had visited the India Art Fair 2024 in Delhi and was spellbound to see tapestries created with glass beads. He has been visiting Hyderabad for the past six months to learn glass beads craft from a group from Lucknow.

Sourcing different glass beads from Mumbai and discovering how they work and their fragility has been a learning experience. With linen cloth as a canvas, he paints mythological figures and fuses glass beads into them. “After three failed experiments, I understood that beads look good only on big and bold works. ” Earlier he used to finish a painting in 10 days, the new artworks with beads take three months to complete. “It takes a longer time to see the final work but the satisfaction of having created something new is immense.”

New chapter with quilt art

“My room resembles a tailor shop littered with pieces of cloth,” says artist Priti Samyukta whose stint as a research scholar forged a new chapter in cloth applique and quilt work. The head of the Department of Painting in Jawaharlal Nehru Architecture and Fine Arts University (JNAFAU) and a Fulbright Scholar, Priti’s post-doctoral submission proposal, ‘Women in Quilt Art Of the South Gulf Region: An investigation into the contribution to 21st century America’ was based on her interest in Gee’s Bend, a African-American rural community in Alabama in the US known for its quilts.

While researching their art pieces in the US in 2023, the artist, who uses ink and acrylic as medium, collected and tore pieces of fabric from the clothes discarded by her US-based sister and niece. She then hand-stitched these coloured pieces of fabric to create abstracts and figurative works with women and cats as her subjects. Besides her two solo exhibitions in 2024 in Alabama and Illinois State Universities, she held a show in January, 2025 at Eastern Connecticut State University, USA.

Back in Hyderabad, she continues the quilt work and collects pieces of denim and distressed denim and threads to get textures out of it . Although painstaking, she likes to hand-stitch as it is interesting and therapeutic. On the challenges of her new medium, she says, “Drawing and filling colour in them is precise in an acrylic/pen and ink works but in quilt, the cut and stitch is tough due to folding of edges and the output is not as anticipated.”

With 3X3 feet and 2 1/2 X 3 feet, each piece takes a month but gives a ‘terrific’ opportunity to learn. “As an art educator, I constantly tell students to experiment, research and find your muse. I realised one keeps finding a muse till the end.”

Wooden avatars

‘Survivor’, a solo show in January 2025 by city-based artist D Pavan Kumar at Triveni Art Gallery, Triveni Kala Sangam in New Delhi showcases the artist’s evolution and progress in art. Through a display of wooden assemblages and drawings, Pavan takes his art to the next level.

Pavan’s stint with wood began a decade ago when his daughter was born in 2012. “I used to carve toys and animals to narrate stories to her and also get her used to the feel of natural material instead of plastic,” he recollects. While drawing and painting landscapes, his journey with wood continued too.

A wooden toy of five or six inches used for imaginative play has now grown in scale to a three dimensional human form (of one to three feet) with curves, paints and phrases and different narratives too.

He works on the butt joint technique (a joint of two wooden pieces placing one above the other) which are glued with a strong adhesive. It takes 15 days for him to execute but if ideation phase is longer, the process gets longer too.

The artist, also an educator (at the National Institute of Fashion Technology, Hyderabad) narrates stories of day-to-day life experiences through the exhibits. “I associate our lives with that piece of wood which was picked up from a shop but now survives as an art piece. It reflects my survival with art for 20 years in a highly commercialised society which builds my confidence that I will still survive.”