Kathmandu:

‘Incidental Meeting’, an exhibition of paintings that began at Siddhartha Art Gallery, Baber Mahal Revisited on March 9, is an oeuvre of three women artists — Sunita Rana and Celia Washington and Montserrat Clausells. Altogether 67 works are on display and each piece speaks of the artist’s artistic ingenuity.

As always Sunita’s works have framed female figures overlapping one another all over the canvas with dark, sombre and light colours dominating. A woman’s figure is natural medium of expression for her. “For me, figures are not as important as the mess-age communicated throu-gh them,” she says. Though she keeps experimenting with media and canvas, her framed figures appear constantly in her painting.

“If we were to juxtapose our memories on a canvas, as they randomly occur, there would be a surreal quality in the overall composition of the canvas,” says Sangeeta Thapa, curator of the gallery.

British artist Celia, currently an artist in residency at Fine Art College of Kathmandu University, has been better known for her conceptual paintings. Her works show her close association with society and current social development. The canvas are full of figures of human and animal parts taking shape. “In conceptual work, real figures fade out which makes it open to many meaning of the figures,” explains KU lecturer and artist Kishor Rajbhandari.

As Morna Nance, regional director for central and South Asia for the British Council put it in her inaugural note, “Some of the paintings are haunting, some are frightening, full of angst, bizarre, mysterious but all capture the imagination and force you to engage with them.”

Montserrat has been known for expressing through interior landscapes, which are often empty spaces, rarely furnished. There are no living beings present in her paintings, which are evocative of tranquillity and meditative mood. These spaces in her painting might or might not exist in the world but it feels still familiar. This time one can identify the space of with Hindu holy places. “Gold indicate spirituality while red on the backdrop signify auspicious occassion,” she explains.

The exhibition is on till March 21