A Paris-based artist who has explored various materials, media and methods, Sujata Bajaj has worked with cold ceramic, terracotta, fabric printing, printmaking, woodcutting, oil painting, to currently mixed media and acrylic on canvas, as well as fibreglass sculptures. Balancing intense colours with tactile surfaces, Sujata works with dark undertones, filling her canvas with bold lines and strokes crisscrossing and separating fields of vivid and subtle colours. Abundant with energy, mystery and exuberance, her work is replete with a dynamic palette that she describes as “a dance of colours”.

Married to a Norwegian, Sujata divides her time between India, Norway and Paris, where her family now resides. The ebullience of Paris life, hues in Norwegian skies, and vibrant colours and spiritual elements of India form a medley of influences in her works. Sujata paints spontaneously onto the canvas, a skill she acquired from her strong acquaintance with Indian tribal art. Her paintings are characterised by a mixture of vigour and control – an explosion of energy filled with fiery reds, intense blues, incandescent yellow ochres, and the occasional animated greens – confined within demarcated spaces at times, and highly interspersed at others. Shafts and streaks of whites piercing through the melange of colours are ubiquitous in her works. Accented with gold leaf and fragments of archaic texts from ancient Sanskrit scriptures, Sujata’s paintings engulf the viewer in a cosmic realm that is remote and primordial.

Image: © Sujata Bajaj, Indigo Blue Art