Give chance a chance

Nothing is pre-planned for Shivani Bhalla. Sometimes, with poet Margret Atwood's lines resounding her mind, her brush decides to give her colours a particular shade. Many a times, characters from writer Gabriel Garca Mrquez's works approach her easel. She does not stop them. "Literature has always influenced my work and forced me to reflect. Even cinema, for that matter. Does it not seem that some frames of Bimal Roy or Guru Dutt's works leap straight out of a painting? How can I isolate myself from the experiences that other art forms promise to offer?" asks 29-year-old Chandigarh-based painter Shivani Bhalla.

The only thing that was planned was her destiny to become a painter. Ever since she was a child, Bhalla, originally from Delhi, was fascinated with colours and what they could do when married to paper. "The figures that I made spoke to me. I could have hour-long conversations with them. The sheer joy of creating something completed me in a peculiar way," says the Masters in Fine Arts graduate from MS University, Baroda.

The young painter, who is an Assistant Professor in Painting at Government College of Arts, Chandigarh, says that by the time she was in class ninth, she knew that she belonged to the world of colours forever. However, her parents and relatives were not happy with her decision. "My sister is an investment banker in the US and most of my cousins have studied medicine or engineering. You can imagine the kind of pressure I was under to adopt a career that would be secure and promised a regular income. Of course, my family is somewhat relieved now that I teach in a college and have a regular income," she says.

But don't academics take away all the time from concentrating on her own work? "Of course your own work does suffer but I try to snatch as much time as possible away from theory that rules my day and immerse myself in my own world at night. Yes, I have seen many artists losing their edge once they enter academics. But that holds true for other professionals as well," says the young painter. But Bhalla is still keen to quit her job and work as a full-time artist sometime in the near future.

The artist who works with gauche and water colours on paper has been living in Chandigarh for the past four years and is happy that the city has given her enough space to grow as an artist. "But I would not say that it has influenced my work. What I generally see here is celebration of mediocrity all around and little effort to strive for excellence, especially amongst the youth. They seem so happy in their shell unlike their counterparts in Delhi or Mumbai," she says.

As we finish our coffee in the loud cafe, Bhalla is intrigued that the frames of her photo-session have already been 'scripted'. "But why are you doing that? I mean why is everything so pre-planned? Why not give chance a chance?" she quips.