With a passion for creativity, Sai Pradhan views visual art and writing as “symbiotic” disciplines. “They are simply different ways to play with ideas or work something out, sometimes even the same idea. One can inspire the other as well.” Eager to explore different channels of expression, Needs Watering showcases her experimentation with material and form. This month, Pradhan elaborates on her approach to art and describes what inspires her.

You’ve described your art and writing as “a lifelong calling.” What initially drew you to follow these creative pursuits?

As a child, creative pursuits were presented to me as a natural way to spend time. I was lucky to be parented by people who gave me books and art supplies from an early age. As I got older, I identified with art and writing enough to chase down, apply to, and participate in a fine and performing arts program in high school even at a time when I was disoriented from having moved across countries; perhaps it felt like a constant in my life even then. In my university years, I started focusing on other academic interests, and later, dove into an intense corporate work life that sidelined creative writing and art, even if it utilized my writing skills from time to time. I think of Mary Oliver’s oft-quoted statement, about how “The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time,” and I am glad to say I decided to give both power and time to my art and writing. 

I understand you’re currently focused on creating art using “mixed materials and a variety of tools.” What’s your creative process?

I usually start with either an aesthetic idea I want to pursue, or a thematic context I feel like attempting to articulate through playing with images, paint, and materials on canvas. I let it percolate, sometimes for weeks at a time, before putting something on canvas. Sometimes I look through old photographs, because I like to carefully store a small quantity of photographs I have taken. Sometimes I follow a trail of a thought, and spiral into a reading black hole on a particular topic, which helps my brain. If the piece asks for materials, I look for materials I can reuse, or scrounge for them in shops; these are usually materials that I can bend and paste, or let fall on canvas (silk for instance), in a way that captures emotion. I am not a classical painter, and so I don’t feel the restrictions of certain “proper” tools and paints; as such, I freely use palette knives, pieces of cardboard, my hands, paint rollers, or brushes. Sometimes it’s about what feels right, and sometimes it’s about achieving a certain effect. 

Would you discuss how this particular piece, Needs Watering, ties into your belief that “art is often born of an intent to examine, experiment, and communicate?”

With this piece, I started with an aesthetic desire to create something that reminded me of the desert, because I had just visited a particularly vast desert and was struck by how it looked from the skies. That desire quickly blended with something I was going through at the time, which was a feeling of extreme fatigue stemming from other work experiences. This forms the examination portion of the intent. The experimentation portion kicked off when I started playing with molding paste, charcoal, and wooden toothpicks, which I have used in that piece. The communicating aspect is inherently present, in my opinion, because I clearly wanted to make something I wanted to present: first to myself, and then to more people.

Is there anything you’d like to further explore with your art? What are your plans for the future?

I have so much I want to explore with my art. I am working on more figurative pieces now, and reminding myself of the form of the human body for that purpose. I am also always drawn to the beauty of intricate details, which I want to adapt to my own mindset which is simply not desirous of being too neat with my art. I have been studying self-portraiture, as well as letting myself experiment with loose but confident sketches in the style of the Fauvists. My plans for the future are to trust my instinct and keep examining and experimenting, to be able to communicate what I want.

Sai Pradhan is an Indian American writer and artist who lives in Hong Kong. Her art can be seen at www.saipradhanart.com and in gallery exhibits from time to time. It has been published in Last Leaves, Door = Jar, and Pithead Chapel magazines.