Comfortable in the skin

Anita Chauhan paints only nudes, groups of women in sensuous disarray. Kishore Singh asks why

Sometimes," sighs Anita Chauhan, "you want to be alone, but nobody enjoys loneliness." Chauhan, flowering perhaps late as an artist, certainly doesn't. Like the women in her paintings, her hair is in magnificent disarray; like the wild child she could be, flowers tucked behind a ear give her a bohemian air. "Togetherness," she giggles, "is in itself a very positive attitude."

This soliloquy has been brought on by a question on why so many of her paintings seem to depict women in groups. Of course, the more apparent question should have been why Chauhan paints nudes, and with such abandon?

Even when there is a vestige of garments, the eye devours naked flesh "" they are sensuous forms creating an expression that radiates confidence in themselves, not unlike the portraits of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.

"I'm feminine from within," chortles Chauhan, "but I have always found that women are very strong. I understand a woman's body, the way it works, its expressions. I enjoy and am comfortable with women as my subject."

There is no artifice in what she says, no hidden layers of meaning. Which could be as true of her art, according to her: "I never sketch a work, or plan it, but the moment I start putting paint on canvas, the painting just happens. Sometimes I'm shocked by what has appeared, but I feel I'm driven "" nothing else can explain it." Conversely, paintings she has planned out to the last detail just don't happen.

A late bloomer, Chauhan was someone who drew and painted effortlessly in school, but never thought of it as a career. Instead, the wild-haired youngster turned for a brief while to modelling before settling for the stressful choice of assisting theatre and later television serial director Balwant Gargi, with whom she worked for 12 years "as scriptwriter, assistant director, costume assistant and coordinator, make-up artiste..."

She painted in her spare time, but only to enliven the walls of her home. Later, encouraged by friends and family "" "I always liked my work," she laughs, "all I wanted was someone to provide me the support" "" she put together her first exhibition, all works on paper, in February 2005. To her surprise, it got her a brief stab of visibility "" and sold out. "I knew then that I wanted to see myself as a strong artist," she says.

From those charcoals and sinisterly dark watercolours, her leap in three years to her next solo (March 16-19, at India Habitat Centre's Open Palms Gallery) has brought with it a change in size (several of the canvases are 4'x6') and an explosion of colour.

"I enjoy bright colours," says Chauhan simply, "they give me a happy feeling. Like when I wear bright colours, I enjoy that, I feel passionate, I feel happy."

Chauhan says the distortions "" particularly of the limbs and the faces "" is deliberate. "My style is contemporary figurative," she adds. "I don't like realism," though she will relent to say that "eyes, expressions, and the breasts" "" she uses a more colloquial expression though "" "are much more realistically portrayed."

As are sometimes some surprise element, such as the crows or birds in some of her works. "I don't know," she appears exasperated, "they just happen."

Her subjects might have bared their bodies, but it's time to find out now whether Chauhan has bared her soul.