Saduma -It started with a dream, and a photo of India on the ceiling of my bedroom, right over my bed. We would one day make it to India and travel as much of the country as we possibly could. India, how you have changed me in so many ways. This piece is the most cathartic piece of art I have ever worked on. Each stroke, each color… I listened to Ravi Shankar while painting, watched Indian films, cooked and ate my favourite Indian dishes, making our home smell and feel like our homes in India. Saduma was a woman who touched our hearts in the beautiful town of Hampi in the state of Karnataka. And I felt the need to tie her into the piece. On the bottom of this piece is sand from the southernmost tip of India in the town Kanyakumari in the state of Tamil Nadu where the Bay of Bengal, the Laccadive sea and the Arabian sea all meet. The sand shines red like rubies in the sun. It is breathtaking. On the top of the piece is this amazing silver shale from the Himalayas. While hiking in the Himalayas our boots would look like they were covered in fairy dust from the shale breaking apart. I picked up a handful and wrapped it in a piece of a scarf I found and brought it back with the ruby sand to be placed in a piece. They found their home here on this repurposed cabinet door tying the piece all together. Mixed media: Acrylic on repurposed oak cabinet door, Ink, ruby red sand (Kanyakumari, India), shale (Ghorepani, Nepal), eucalyptus leaves (Winnipeg conservatory), trevesia palmata leaves (snowflake tree, Winnipeg conservatory).
