lying and who planned to harm their dear ones, friends and children, but were accepted as innocents. Urge to express came back and I took a conscious decision to express myself through the medium of painting and later in sculpture.
The journey of my expression through art has been similar to the journey of contemporary Indian art after Independence - of derivation, of introspection and of discovering ones own creative visual imagery for expression.
I started as a painter but later included sculpture also, as form of my expression. This inclusion has not been abrupt but has evolved over the years. On the way, I started making hard-edge paintings. These were abstract derivations with ritual connotations. Third dimension crept in my works at this stage. Around this time, I felt that my works of this period developed an aloof personality of their own after they were completed.I became stranger to them and they, stranger to me. They existed, were accepted and I existed separately. I chanced making some

figurative sculptures and found that some part of creative and emotional mine gets intensely infused in my sculptures. I no more became stranger to my sculptures. A togetherness developed and continues, whenever we confront each other. In our different moods and shades of thoughts, we communicate our and humanity's joys, sorrows, conflicts and emotions. I created environment for my sculptures to live and found they were content, more vocal and expressive. I provided for some, organic environment and they accepted it and started growing with the growth of the environment. A mention of my sculpture, Mankind 2110 (An alternative) exhibited in the Fifth Triennale India will explain the role of environment as part of my sculptures, better. A bronze figure of Devi (Goddess) with many arms, on a log of wood suspended horizontally from the ceiling, is walking to descend to a growing paddy field below. The paddy plants grew in height with passing of each day and swayed with the breeze.
The paddy field provided environment and the achieved a total experience of a

spiritual happening happening in nature. The green of the paddy field embarked me on the adventure of using colour in three dimensions in company of my later sculptures.
DRAWING for me is a complete expression and a vehicle to arrive at my sculpture and at my painting. My drawing, to me, is an assurance. These drawings begin to exist independently and along with my sculptures and paintings. My concern in the drawing, in sculpture and in painting, is human form or human face. Elements of environment and concern, I feel, are needed to surround these to provide them context, stature, validity and contemporariness.
I draw, when a compulsion ceases me. I draw more by instinct rather than by the tenants of formal training to draw, with any instrument or tool capable of drawing. The operation starts with a dot or a line or a blot created with the help of a medium. Then a coordination of instinct, fingers, holding the tool or a brush and the medium develops. During this process, a moment comes when a ray ray of energy flows out of my

inner self, through my fingers to the drawing. The drawing is complete and I recognise it - some part of my creativity and emotion gets intensely infused in the drawing.
The erotic in the drawings has symbolic presence similar to Shivling in the temple or the allotted location of panels of erotic sculptures in the scheme of the structure of a temple to guide the devotee, through indulgence, to fulfillment of life circle on earth and after.
I rediscovered my PAINTING through my DRAWING and my SCULPTURE, as if to complete a circle.
Programmed in me, I carry compulsions of my cultural identity. I am an aggregate of my local, regional and global consciousness. I am placed in this changing world which has just entered 21st century. Man is going to crowd the world with assembly line produced products. Man has become a suspect of destroying environment and our cohabitants on earth. He has enlarged himself beyond this planet and is extending his reach in the universe. Man will change the world from

‘natural/material work accessories' world to ‘biological/genetic work specific accessories' world. He will rehabilitate other planets with these engineered work specific accessories and start living there by modifying himself. Man has started imagining that he will master the universe. He is dreaming of immortality amidst planets.
Electronics media is becoming a super power and is taking control of our physical, intellectual and emotional responses. It is churning our cultural identities. It is influencing our needs and choices. Through the advertisements and the programs inserted in between the advertisements, T.V is researching, recreating and inventing 'Icons', as representatives of our time, life, desires, dreams and emotions. Celebrity has emerged as the most powerful and influential icon. One among many types of celebrity icons which are occupying TV screens is the super model in various forms of presentations.
For many years an 'Icon', an elongated human form, most of the times a female, has been evolving to take the center stage in my creative visual

imagery, in my drawings, in my sculptures & in my paintings. This icon resembles super model in content and in thought process. Its reach is from earth to heaven. It dwells amidst planets, presuming immortality, surrounded by ‘the assembly line produced products', icons of vanishing cohabitants of this planet and  the icons which I derive from my ultural inheritance to accomplish my creative visual expression in my drawings, sculptures & paintings.

Ved Nayar