Anjum Singh (b.1967)

Anjum Singh inherited painting from both her parents and pursues it like a vocation.
"When I started out as a student at Santiniketan, I was heavily influenced by Amrita Sher-Gill. I was, therefore, drawn towards a lot of figurative motifs. My sheer feel for colour and texture has led me to explore forms that don't tell a story, but exist for the sake of existence. I am not certain about the future of the figurative element in my work, but I do know that I wish to paint the simplicity of space, with or without form."

Trained at Santiniketan, Rabindranath Tagore's art school in West Bengal, Anjum Singh's paintings are a manifestation of her fascination with bright reds, oranges, yellows and pinks that are seen to dominate her canvasses, with an occasional stroke of gold or brown.

They say that artists have method in their madness. The opposite is true of Anjum. While her state of mind does spill over, she is a disciplined painter who paints each day till she decides that the work has acquired a finality.

Not bound by any one interpretation her forms and figures are diffused and can be seen at various levels. In several of her paintings, she has used the brush and the knife to create a layered effect for the desired texture.

Her initial training at Santiniketan made sure that she was formally well-equipped to paint. This foundation was further solidified at Delhi University where she completed her Masters degree in Fine Arts, before going on to the Corcoran School of Art, Washington DC, in 1992 to learn painting and printmaking. It was in America that she became more open to experimentation and developed her own signature style.

When Anjum returned to India, she simplified the texture she used in her works, just using flat structures. In her work it is the surface, the texture and the application of paint that is very important.

Anjum Singh lives and works in New Delhi.