Artist Bharati Prajapati on Shedding Inhibitions & Inviting Creativity

Contemporary Indian artist Bharti Prajapati firmly believes in the importance of inviting creativity into our daily lives. Art has helped her to navigate the unexpected twists and turns of life, and she finds that it can be a powerful medium for everyone, not just professional artists.

In her paintings, Bharti captures the creative soul of India — its gorgeous traditions of craft and design, passed down by women from one generation to the next. She observed these folk traditions firsthand while a student at the National Institute of Design, when she traveled to Gujarat and lived with tribals in Kutch. Bharti then spent a decade as a professional textile designer before becoming an artist, but this experience and her passion for textiles has remained at the heart of her work. Her paintings celebrate the role of women in preserving India’s cultural heritage and exude a strong feeling of interconnectedness, not only among the women but with nature.

— Sonia Nayyar Patwardhan

In her own words, artist Bharti Prajapati writes about the power of art and self-expression:

Art has helped me to handle the ups and downs of life differently. When I look at a problem, it’s more about asking, how do I perceive this and how would I go about this? Instead of saying to myself, this is a problem and I will have to solve it.

Art has given me a calmness of the mind. I look at anything and everything more creatively. The thought process that you go through as an artist is a vital part of creative growth. I compare it to the growth process of a seed into a tree. You plant an idea, like a seed, in your mind. Sometime, somewhere, somehow, about somebody… it is just there, and the seed keeps growing into a small plant in your mind. It could grow immediately or after a few years. And when it is ready to be taken out and replanted somewhere, you feel the urge to create.

I think it’s important for everyone to invite creativity into their lives. Fear seems to hold us back from expressing ourselves in today’s society. But it’s about time that we shed the whole worried attitude of how our expression will look and what will happen, and instead we must be more creative in ourselves and follow what makes us feel happy.

Our grandmothers and mothers used to knit, sew and embroider. It was their way of being creative. And in the rural villages, people paint directly onto their walls without any inhibition. We can find our own ways of being creative too. It could be singing, writing, sculpting…

My work is theme-based and I prefer to create a series for a few years at a time, rather than individual paintings — I get very focused on working towards one particular theme and do not deviate on anything else during that time.

The metaphors and symbols in the Earth Story series come from Hindu mythology, while the scenes of dancing are inspired by the women and landscape of Kutch. I also reference the body and its phases of life. Like springtime is early growth, or young energy. We live each season over the course of our lives. We are connected to nature and the whole universe in that way. I think it’s all very, very beautiful.

My deep-rooted love for the art and the people of India started with the tribal women and their crafts, but it was just sitting there, inside of my mind, until I started painting and putting it on canvas. That is what I hope shines through my work.

– Bharti Prajapati