This article appeared in "The Park Record" recently (18th Feruary 2009):
Nepalese artist finds serenity through craft
After five years in Park City, Kalyan Rai remains idealistic about America
By GREG MARSHALL
Of the Record staff
“Everything is global, it’s all one family,” artist Kalyan Rai explained Friday. “I revere, respect, tolerate and have a yearning for different faiths. As a tender kid, I was taught to not to be fooled. Allah, Christ, Buddha and Shiva are but the same One, born in a human form in different geographical zones, with different names.”
Today, Rai, who was born in Nepal, says that he is secular, but speaks on good authority about different cultures. He has travelled broadly for his art, work and education. Rai has exhibited and sold his abstract geometric paintings in Berkeley, Calif., Japan, Holland, Switzerland, New Zealand, Spain, Germany, and Park City.
With the help of his patron and friend Jim Powell, Rai put on a solo show here in 2004 and was featured in the 2005 exhibit“Seven Painters from the Himalayan Kingdom.” He has also painted a mural for the children’s reading room at Park City Library. Rai came from a long ways off. He attended prim English boarding schools in Darjeeling (Victoria Boys' School, Kurseong : my note) , India, starting at the age of five and quickly took to painting and drawing as a way of coping with a foreign world rife with starched collared uniforms and corporeal punishment. “Any 5-year-old kid would undergo culture shock,” he said. “It was problematic for me. Art was my outlet. We find ventilation or we go crazy. Even in prison, people find art. Likewise, art became a way of expressing the inner world of myself, venting.”
He continued his studies at Visva Bharati University, a school founded by the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. After graduating, he returned to Nepal and taught art to junior high school students and American Jesuits attending seminary abroad.
When his brother, Mahendra, received a Fulbright scholarship to study urban planning at the University of California at Berkeley, Rai decided to visit. He ended up staying in California for five months. In that time, he participated in two group shows and gained formative exposure to the American art scene.
Today, Rai works in acrylic, watercolor, charcoal and pencil. He likens some of his installation art and mixed media projects to being a Buddhist monk working on sand paintings for days and months only to see it borne to nothing by the winds of diaspora.
“More and more, I find my work becoming increasingly spontaneous as I strive to reflect in my art the many facets of life,” he recently wrote. “In most cases, I put forward images reflecting my intuitions and feelings. Usually I begin with an empty mind and let the impulses flow through me. I become more of a channel or a medium to capture and express fleeting images of the spirit of life.”
To see some of Kalyan's work, visit: http://www.cyberartgallery.org/?gallery=paintings&ex=11
Nepalese artist finds serenity through craft
After five years in Park City, Kalyan Rai remains idealistic about America
By GREG MARSHALL
Of the Record staff
“Everything is global, it’s all one family,” artist Kalyan Rai explained Friday. “I revere, respect, tolerate and have a yearning for different faiths. As a tender kid, I was taught to not to be fooled. Allah, Christ, Buddha and Shiva are but the same One, born in a human form in different geographical zones, with different names.”
Today, Rai, who was born in Nepal, says that he is secular, but speaks on good authority about different cultures. He has travelled broadly for his art, work and education. Rai has exhibited and sold his abstract geometric paintings in Berkeley, Calif., Japan, Holland, Switzerland, New Zealand, Spain, Germany, and Park City.
With the help of his patron and friend Jim Powell, Rai put on a solo show here in 2004 and was featured in the 2005 exhibit“Seven Painters from the Himalayan Kingdom.” He has also painted a mural for the children’s reading room at Park City Library. Rai came from a long ways off. He attended prim English boarding schools in Darjeeling (Victoria Boys' School, Kurseong : my note) , India, starting at the age of five and quickly took to painting and drawing as a way of coping with a foreign world rife with starched collared uniforms and corporeal punishment. “Any 5-year-old kid would undergo culture shock,” he said. “It was problematic for me. Art was my outlet. We find ventilation or we go crazy. Even in prison, people find art. Likewise, art became a way of expressing the inner world of myself, venting.”
He continued his studies at Visva Bharati University, a school founded by the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. After graduating, he returned to Nepal and taught art to junior high school students and American Jesuits attending seminary abroad.
When his brother, Mahendra, received a Fulbright scholarship to study urban planning at the University of California at Berkeley, Rai decided to visit. He ended up staying in California for five months. In that time, he participated in two group shows and gained formative exposure to the American art scene.
Today, Rai works in acrylic, watercolor, charcoal and pencil. He likens some of his installation art and mixed media projects to being a Buddhist monk working on sand paintings for days and months only to see it borne to nothing by the winds of diaspora.
“More and more, I find my work becoming increasingly spontaneous as I strive to reflect in my art the many facets of life,” he recently wrote. “In most cases, I put forward images reflecting my intuitions and feelings. Usually I begin with an empty mind and let the impulses flow through me. I become more of a channel or a medium to capture and express fleeting images of the spirit of life.”
To see some of Kalyan's work, visit: http://www.cyberartgallery.org/?gallery=paintings&ex=11
posted by Shubhojoy Mitra at 20:03
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