General Compartment III (2003) Painting by Durga Das

I am from Chettikulangara, a lush green village of Kerala, having indigenous legends and vibrant folk art traditions. Ebullient sequence of our harvest festivals infiltrated into my consciousness reverberating still in me, when I engage in art activities. Surging through the festive crowds with an imaginative mind was my child hood hobby, which trigger my ideas and fantasies. I spent hours under enormous wooden festival chariots ("Kettu kazhcha"), thinking about my ancestors and their art practices with awe. There were rapturous moments of reflex conditions when I follow the palanquin procession of village deity. In summer my friends collects ochre tinted clay from harvested fields and I ,in turn, puzzled them by creating forms having elements of our folk culture.I went college of Fine Arts, Thiruvananthapuram with this lineage and there I encountered with the isms of art. But I was always obsessed with the images of survivals, which hesitated to vanish from my canvas. My first Solo show 'TRINITY' conducted in Jehangir Art Gallery soon after the horrific violence in Bombay made me to do some thing which passify my subliminal mind and an attempt to respond to the transcendent. This is my present destination.

• Nationality: INDIA
• Date of birth : 1967
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary Indian Artists