Yashika Aggarwal
What media of art do you work in?
I work primarily with Acrylics and Oils while incorporating other mediums like Acrylic inks, Markers, Fabric Paints, Pastels, pens and Textures.
How would you describe your genre of painting?
Intuitive, abstract expressions of my perceptions backed by my yogic and motherhood experiences.
Can you describe your creative process? When you begin a painting, do you have an idea of what the end result is? Do you prepare sketches first? Do you know the colors you are going to use?
I keep my process entirely raw and intuitive, free of logical plans and decisions. I try to keep a direct flow of intuition unhindered by theories of colors, balance and composition. I just pour my innermost self in my work and until it becomes a mediative process for me and the end result is surprisingly fresh as well as deeply known. If I work on a painting for a few weeks, it reflects my journey in those days. If I look at my old works, I can read it like a diary.
What is the message you want people to take away from your artwork?
I leave the interpretation to the viewer. I want my artworks not to be seen or analysed, rather be experienced by people in their own way as some part of their lives.
100 years from now, how do you want people to remember you as an artist?
An artist from their times, still fresh and alive in my works.
What is your favourite praise you have received from a client or about your work?
When other person’s interpretation is closest to mine, which has happened a few times, then it just makes my day.
Once a complete stranger who kept looking at my artwork for about 10 mins said “I cannot stop looking at this artwork, there is so much happening here and there are a lot of stories”.
What are your hobbies outside of Art?
I love to draw henna on my own hands. I enjoy dancing at times especially in the rain as it makes me feel so free which is also quite close to how I feel when I am painting.
What is an interesting piece of trivia about you that people don’t know?
I like to write about my artworks sometimes. Also, usually at the beginning of my artworks I like to listen to some light music, or my most fav prayers. In the final phases of my work ,I get so engrossed in it that I forget about everything else.
Give me one or two sentences about your family?
Love, respect, good deeds and forgiveness, above selfishness and money. I have lived this every single day with my mother, father and brother since childhood and it forms the basis of my being today with my little one and husband, who is also my best friend.
What has been your strongest influence in your art career thus far?
Painting for me is like accessing my soul and experiencing the explosive stillness within, beyond the logical mental stigma that we surround ourselves with day by day living materialistically. Sometimes I forget who I really am, my artworks and my painting time reminds me of myself, and that is my biggest motivation.
What is your vision for yourself as an artist 5 years from now?
I wish to have grown in my yogic journey and spread the experiences of higher states through my paintings in an altogether new and fresh ways. So that my paintings; as living entities can bring meditative states to the place where they are hung, and have a positive impact on people and spaces around and make sense to generations to come.
If it can or cannot be achieved in 5 year, I just want to be working towards this and make it reality one day.
Which one is your favorite artwork you have ever done and tell us why?
Usually my latest is my most favourite, as it captures my recent most self.
However, “Devotional love” is one of my all time favourite, as it captures the essence of love in its true sense of giving and in its highest states of being devotional which doesn’t need any acknowledgment. I refer to this love as that of Indian deities Radha Krishna.
Which is one of your most recent works?
My latest artwork is about creating some distance in the canvas and the artwork, still continuing to portray the play of energies around us. “Enchanting karmic charades” is a hanging installation and I try to use the light symbolising living force, to pass through the charades of Karma.