Reshma Azmi decided to pursue painting as her lifetime goal soon after the tenth grade,
at which time she enrolled in the Fine Arts Program of the College of Arts and Crafts
at the University of Lucknow in India. Here, for a period of five years, she got the
opportunity to study and develop her art abilities, under the guidance of some very
talented and well-known art teachers and artists. Since graduating, Reshma has painted
relentlessly over the years, working on a wide variety of subjects. She has participated
in several solo and group shows in India and the United States. Several of her painting
series are currently on display in both public and private collections. She has explored
various media including acrylic, oil, fabric, pencil, charcoal and watercolor. Her
strongest interest, and the majority of her work, however, is in oils and acrylics.
When Reshma relocated from Lucknow, India to the California Bay Area in early 2005, she
saw a magnolia for the first time. Since then, magnolias have appeared in her artwork on
several occasions. But flowers and the natural world have always been a part of Reshma's
artwork; for her, living in the United States has been not only an introduction to new
experiences and cultural landscapes, but also an opportunity for reinterpretation of
roads already traveled.
As an East Indian residing in the U.S., Reshma is acutely aware of the dichotomies
between American and South Asian ways of life. While observing how American society
expresses itself in the visual arena, Reshma has become particularly interested in what
she reluctantly calls 'pop art' for lack of a better term: the de-emphasis of documentary
depiction in favor of movement, texture, and pattern. She sees this 'zooming in,' as she
calls it, everywhere in American society - fine arts, advertising, design, and even
cinema - and she expects that it will influence her next set of paintings, which will
evolve from the double-vision she has learned to embrace and even celebrate as an
inevitable result of her immersion in a new culture.
A crucial aspect of Reshma's artistic expression is desire: sublimated, unfulfilled,
suppressed, unspoken, or made manifest at great risk. The pleasant images in her
paintings - birds, flowers, beautiful women, the tranquility of quiet rooms - typically
belie a suggestion of loss, or danger, or quiet suffering. While growing up in India,
Reshma painted this beauty/pain dichotomy because she saw it around her, in a close-knit,
conservative society that often demands adherence to ancient traditions at the expense
of personal choice. Now, she paints that dichotomy because, as she says, she sees it on
the faces of Americans. She proposes that perhaps the freedom and openness of American
society is accompanied by, or comes at the price of, the breakdown of family structures
and the consequent isolation and loneliness.
Endnote
Although her paintings are quite expressive, Reshma does not necessarily want the
viewer to feel what she feels, or see what she sees. She hopes that viewers will be
sufficiently intrigued to find their own meaning in her work.
Reshma Azmi resides in Oakland, California. She is currently working with colored
pencil, mixed media, and a new series of oil paintings.
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Reshma Azmi |
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