This is my first portrait. Trying to replicate a face with all its beauty and complexity. I started threading this piece when I heard about my granny’s declining health. This is not her, it’s in her likeness.
I’m just learning to recognise the duality of privilege. The more boxes I tick, the heavier the privilege gets. My entitlement serves me and makes my insecurities more acute. When the need to survive becomes purely intellectual, self-reflection becomes damaging. This beautiful barbed crown’s appeal lies in its glittering grace but its sharp edges inflict more than just bleeding cuts. It adds weight to my leaps but cushions me always. It gives me immunity from failure but catapults my fear to nameless new places, especially when the privilege is not earned. The transition to a life ensconced in velvet is fairly recent, so the memory of the daily grind is fresh. It makes me apologetic for all that I have and all that I don’t.
Sisters are difficult to explain. Mine is vicious in her truth telling yet unconditional in every other way. Growing up I saw her model behavior as a major inconvenience. She was the good daughter whose path was shaped by others, yet she fought for me to forge my own. Even though our age gap would make us peers she grew into a pubescent guardian, making pretend paan out of folded roti and sabzi so I would finish my food; at other times flinging hangers at me when we fought, and then nervously standing outside my door to hand me my first sanitary napkin. We still fight with full intention but never meaning the violent words. These screaming matches are almost always followed by apologetic tears. And somehow, the heaviness disappears leaving the relationship uncluttered. The conflict is the result of vastly different personalities being forced together by blood and bone – and this makes us devoted and defensive of the other’s flaws. We’ve explored through biased lenses the arc of each other’s lives accepting and celebrating what I thought was every emotion, till I felt my sister’s very pregnant belly. I wasn’t prepared for the heart exploding joy I felt when I heard his heartbeat. This tiny human baking away in my tiny sister, moving to her voice, suiting up just a little bit more every day. This unborn human has made my jaded image of her dissolve into a cascade of emotions. I now see the strength in her femininity, I see her reticent feminism, I see her.
This piece is a culmination of my love Tolkien , my husband and embroidering. I wanted to make a birthday piece for my husband that was straight and simple so I could thread a shared secret into it.
Nolan was rescued by my friend and subsequently loved and spoilt. While needle point portraits are intimidating for me, my love for dogs far exceeds my fear of my inability. This is me trying to improve my very underdeveloped visual sensibility.
This is the first canvas I’ve made as a gift for friends. While it was odd to poke holes through their faces, I really enjoyed the tropical-forest-on-acid vibe. I’m going to try and make more canvases where I can throw-up color without getting nauseous by repping a rainbow.
This is a fangirl post. A lot has happened to me over the course of last year, but the thing that’s been constant has been the podcast ‘My Favourite Murder.’ It brought levity to my day with storytelling that explores human depravity with honesty. The hosts (Georgia and Karen) speak freely about their own addictions and anxieties which has made me explore my own in ways that I didn’t think I needed to.
Long ago I was accused of making things look cute – I’ve doubted my creative instincts since then. I understood art to be solitary, making mass appeal undesirable. How can you be true to your art if your creation seeks to make people happy? I’ve decided I like happy people. Human gratification gets me off. I don’t prescribe to this singular way to create. Life is lonely enough without alienating people through artistry. The more I work, the easier it is for me to understand my place as a creator. This is my first commissioned piece for a newly wedded couple. I hope it gave them joy as it did me.
My emotions follow a very similar arc for every commissioned piece. It always starts energetically when I’m mapping my designs and figuring out the colour palette; from there it goes into a self-deprecating mode where I second guess every stitch. I absolutely hate it till I put the very last finishing touches - in this case it was the teeny dots and the stamen of the flowers. I know it’s time to stop adding things when I begin to actually appreciate the canvas in its entirety. This acceptance soon gives way to self-loathing when I send images to my patrons and I don’t hear back within the minute. So far they’ve been kind with their words and accepting of my creative expression.
This canvas was commissioned by a daughter for her strong, single mum. I wanted to incorporate all the warmth and brightness that mothers emulate.
Canvas size: A5
Making this canvas gave me so much anxiety.. I intended it to be a wedding present for a friend I’ve know for over a decade and her partner who I didn’t really know. How could i make something that they both could enjoy? My answer was to just make something abstract. This non-commitall choice made me re-do stitches leaving gaping holes in their beautiful photograph. After months slowly destroying the photograph I unclenched, remembering conversations about sneakers, coffee, food and food and FOOD.
This incredibly late wedding present now sits on their bookshelf and that makes me happy.
At 12 my period surprised me. I knew what it was, but the pain was unlike anything I’d experienced, not in its severity but in its specificity. I was confused about walking with a chunky lump between my legs (hi 90’s pads), about bleeding all over my sheets, about the distinctive smell, about the painful shits, about the irritability and about all the silence around it. My friends whispered wide-eyed and sympathetic, silently acknowledging my initiation into our collective shame. It took me three years of bleeding before I could go and buy my first pad. The idea of owning my own bodily function was absurd. How could I celebrate my dirty blood when it made me undesirable for Kanya Puja and Shabrimala? My time of the month was referred to with cautious vocabulary and was packaged in black polythene bags. It took a long time to figure out that the story of the female body was camouflaged by exalting her virtue. I’m learning still to understand what my blood is to me, to not cringe at emptying my menstrual cup to be okay, with sexualizing my body.
