Interview

Subir Hati -Winner of The Emerging Artist of the Year Award 2016.

Subir Hati, a graduate from the Banaras
Hindu University (Master of Fine Arts) is the winner of The Emerging Artist
Award 2016. I spoke to him after the award ceremony; here is what he said:
JS: I like your work, especially the clean,
symmetrical forms and the minimalistic colour palate.
SH: I am a very restless person, I try to
compensate for this in my artwork, which is neat, ordered, has clean lines and
symmetrical forms. I have been working to perfect it over the last 17 years.
JS: How did you decide to get into art? Did you have family support?
SH: I always loved the arts. My father was
a businessman and did not like the idea that I was going to Art College. I had
a tough time trying to persuade him to let me attend art school. In fact my
brothers are working with my father and are a part of the family
business. It has been hard; I have had to struggle quite a bit because I
wasn’t earning anything and my wife who is a teacher also spent a fair amount
of her earnings on supporting my art practice. When you are passionate about something
you have to keep at it, you cannot do it for a year and give up when and if the
going gets tough.
JS: Your hard work and struggle is paying off now.
SH: Yes, I am happy. It is the first time I
am getting an award and I feel I deserve it. In fact, after graduating
from the Government College in Kolkata, I worked as a furniture designer, a
jewelry designer and also a textile designer. After all this work experience I
joined the BHU. As a matter of fact, I work with an architect even
now, not regularly but off-and-on. While at the BHU I decide to interpret
art through mathematics and started researching the methods I could use to
achieve this. I spent three years carrying out this experiment.
JS: Do you work everyday?
SH: I am an Insomniac, so quite often I
paint all night. I do not paint everyday but I am constantly visualizing /
composing even when I am not painting. It usually takes me two –
three months to complete a work. We hope to see more wonderful work by
Subir Hati, especially after his residency in Scotland.