Narayan is a Chennai-based, self-taught ar5st who, along with his children, set up Garage Magic Studios during the pandemic lockdowns and embarked on explora5ons of acrylic and mixed media works. Inspired by V.S. Gaitonde, Laxman Shrestha, Gerhard Richter and Claude Monet, Narayan's abstract works seek to create spaces of medita5ve silence and reflec5ve light, even as they delight the viewer with a wondrous interplay of bright colours. In a different capacity, Narayan is a Senior Associate Editor at The Hindu newspaper and a Director of companies of The Hindu group. Ar.st Statement - Pain.ng My trajectory as an ar5st has defied the narrow formalism of a typical professional art career: I began pain5ng in my early 40s with my only guide and anchor being childhood and young adult years spent looking at art, with my family, at galleries and museums world over. Mine has been a life of subliminal absorp5on of ar5s5c narra5ve, an unspoken comprehension of how form, colour and composi5on can come together to create wondrous meaning, which truly animates an ar5st to produce persuasive works from thin air. Combining my early exposure to a global ar5s5c impulse with an uncompromising approach to research and instruc5ve conversa5ons within the art community, I work towards developing and deepening a unique style and oeuvre that challenges the typical formats seen in the sphere of abstract expressionism in Indian art. To my surprise my works have received a warm recep5on from family, friends, collectors, galleries, and curators. To keep my young co-ar5sts engaged with the social implica5ons of crea5ng art in a developing country, I ensure that Garage Magic Studios donates profits to a charity suppor5ng the educa5on of the girl child in India. Ar.st Statement – Sculpture Narayan Lakshman is a painter who has taken the plunge into sculpture as a natural and organic extension of his ar5s5c vision, which is rooted in a deep contempla5on of peace, oneness and the unassailable interconnectedness of the universe in all its intricacy. What he has expressed on a canvas as the supreme posi5on of the human soul as an ephemeral figment dancing through the abstract mediums of 5me and space has now found voice in elegant pink Makrana marble, a soliloquy in stone. Rooted in the encompassing essence of love, Narayan’s sculpted designs are an ode to the fundamental core of the human condi5on – the power of empathy leading to the resolute protec5on of a single sen5ent being by the community at large, and triumph of spirit that is manifest in togetherness. Thus, bridging the individual experience of enlightenment with a broader experience of communitarian solidarity, Narayan’s work goes to the very heart of the existence on a spiritual plane – an ar5s5c form that leads to transforma5ve introspec5on by the viewer of his artworks, a living process of self-realisa5on in real 5me. If there is a common thread that undergirds Narayan’s ar5s5c mo5va5on, it is the concept of energy, and the associated paradigm that sees the energy of the universe as anima5ng three core aspects of this universe: truth, existence and joy. It comes as no surprise, then, that Narayan’s sculpture designs encapsulate a ceaseless flow of energy through the works themselves, almost as if to suggest that there is no separa5on between the various elements of the work, and indeed between the work, its viewers, and the universe itself.