"Attitude XXI"

Human consciousness gets coloured by emotion. Reality reveals itself in the emotional and imaginative background of our mind. In Art, there is a link that involves the creator to establish a relationship with the art content, nature or the objective world and with the appreciator. “...Science says: ‘I know’, Art says: ‘I perceive’. All our pictures, images, songs and poetry say the same thing: ‘I perceive’...”

Art to me is a new way of engaging with myself and the world around me. As an Art practitioner, through my paintings and art practices, I try to re-observe my visual experience. I try to explore the forms, traces and portray my inner and outer journeys through mediums and surfaces. My painterly expressions are inspired by the natural elements and my visual surroundings. Through my painting discourse, I have tried to express the geographical setting of my artworks and reveal a specific attitude. I try to reveal the socio-psychological reflection of our human-being surroundings, just as the reflection of art practices always inspire me through our socio-political-psychological behaviour of our environmental surroundings.

Anirban Dhar is an Educator, Visual Artist, Writer and Researcher. He is born in Silchar, Assam, India. Anirban is a Gold Medalist, Merit Prize Recipient, Endowment Awardee in Master of Visual Arts (MVA) with specialisation in Painting and Topper in Bachelor of Visual Arts (BVA) with specialisation in Painting from the Department of Visual Arts, Assam University, Silchar (A Central University Established by an Act of Parliament). He submitted his PhD thesis from the same university.

His areas of interest are in New Media Art and Contemporary Art practices of the globe. In his several years of research and teaching experience Anirban has been involved as a visual artist in Santiniketan Society of Visual art & Design (SSVAD )Art Centre, Santiniketan, under the guidance of eminent internationally known artist Jogen Chowdhury where he also got the opportunity to shared his creative process with the leading artists of the art world - K G Subramanyan, Anjolie Ela Menon, Arpana Caur, Himmat Shah, K S Radhakrishnan, Manu Parekh, Madhvi Parekh, Sunil Das, Jayasri Burman, Jayashree Chakravarty, Subrata Gangapadhyay, Shuvaprasanna, Sipra Bhattacharjee, Paresh Maity, Chandra Bhattacharjee, Prabhakar Kolte, Ganesh Haloi, Lalu Prasad Shaw, K Laxma Gaud, Sakti Burman and S G Vasudev.

Anirban’s areas of expertise are in modern art, postmodern art, history of art and architecture, aesthetics, traditional art and cultural studies/practices. He has contributed extensively in several international and national level art exhibitions, artists-in-residency programmes, workshops and artists’ camps in India including Lalit Kala Akademi and Ministry of Culture initiatives. He has contributed his writings and published research papers for many international and national level publications, seminars and conferences. His artworks are also in the collections of academic institutes, centres of art in India & overseas. Anirban is at present working as the Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual Arts, Graphic Era Hill University, Dehradun.