Blink

Description

During my travel to the Himalayas, I kept seeing #naga everywhere. Right from Nepal, where the iconology, architecture and art is teeming with these half-divine half-human beings, that inhabit the underground world, to tibetian Murals and art and in the actual mountains, I saw so many five hooded seven hooded cave like structures and taverns and holes all around Kailash on my three day trek. I seriously feel there’s an entire naga civilization around Himalayas that needs to be explored.

The energy of the Nagas is very intense but flowing with compassion. I have been researching a lot into the Naga mythology, as part of my Mahabharata research, and the snake eating its own tail is a symbol of the entire universe eating itself and birthing itself in turn. It’s the Infinity symbol, all our cells contain the double helixed DNA, human evolution from amphibians, there are simply too many connections and synchronicities to Nagas that occur to me lately. Consequently I have been feeling this intense, confusing energy since my return, that cannot be quite described. I’ve been having physical, mental and psychological changes that are quite in sync with the Naga energy.

This painting was just supposed to be a venting exercise where I wanted to capture this intense agitation I was feeling inside. I noticed a perfect Naga eye ( right corner of the Painting), and I developed it a bit more, and wanted to capture the evolution of Nagas to Humans. Nagas don’t have eyelids that blink, according to mythology and I wanted to gradually show the development of eyelids, and the importance of taking a pause, and blink. It could also be construed as a way to define time, as we stop the infinite world while we blink, and look inside, and define a concept called time.