Artist Bharati Sagar on her tryst with Nature

As much as she loves working with new media, Bengaluru-based artist, Bharati Sagar, is happy to return to her water colours, dry pastels, charcoal and oil to capture her heart’s delight — Nature and people. Her latest solo show, A Tryst With Nature, follows her experiments with metal dust and citric acid on canvas.

“I did three shows with metal dust, and though I found it quite messy, I don’t think I will give it up. Two pieces in this show too, have been created with that medium. I also wanted to return to my previous work,” says Bharati.

“I love meeting new people and children — that is how this latest series came about,” she adds, talking about the 20-odd pieces she has created over the past two to three years. “I had begun some of them before Preserving Magnificence (her previous show on endangered species), and picked up from where I had left off.”

Artist Bharati Sagar
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

Also read: How artist Bharati Sagar attempts to preserve magnificence through her art

The canvases in A Tryst With Nature have been executed in the artist’s unmistakable style — whimsical and dreamlike, with an Alice-in-Wonderland quality. According to Shirley Mathew, curator of the show, “Bharati is an accomplished artist and her way of handling portraits is quite different from others. They are wistful, poetic, and endearing, with a romantic appeal.”

Bharati says she draws her inspiration from memories and the happenings around her. “My grandchildren were traipsing in and out of the house, and those phases registered with me. I brought out my recollections in different ways,” says the artist who is constantly sketching.

And yet, as unsophisticated as they may look, most of Bharati’s works carry a simple message on behalf of Mother Nature if one cares to acknowledge it. For instance, Where Have All The Flowers Gone is about the environment, depicting a child holding onto the globe, wanting to protect it, while surrounded by wilting or dried flowers.

Boy and Bird, Dialogue from A Tryst With Nature by artist Bharati Sagar
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

Unlike many artists, Bharathi believes in titling her work. “I would like to leave some direction for viewers so they have an understanding of what’s going on in my mind. Having said that, I’m open to their own interpretations as well.”

The artist, who fell in love with art and drawing as a child, says it was a compulsory subject in school and she developed a strong hand at figure drawing there. She went on to enrol at the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Fine Arts and Architecture in Hyderabad. “In those days, if you got more than 80% in your entrance exam, you went straight up to the second year and that is a good memory for me.”

Bharati, who is happiest in her studio, says, “For me, art has been a form of devotion and meditation.”

A Tryst With Nature by Bharati Sagar will be on display at MKF Museum of Art till July 2, 2025. Entry free, Mondays closed.