The curatorial concept behind Painted Parallels developed as a way to follow and showcase separate bodies of work that either share common creative roots or may have developed independently with similar and or parallel thoughts, ideas, and visual treatment. As their first curatorial project together, artists Sohini Dhar and Sudeshna Sengupta chose their own work to explore this idea. Their paintings featured in their current exhibit may be seen as Painted Parallels, as they have evolved separately, yet there are commonalities and contrasts that the viewer is invited to explore.

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The two artists finished their Masters degrees in Fine Arts in 1985 from Visva Bharati, a university founded by the humanist poet, playwright, artist, educationist, philosopher, and 1913 Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore. Since then, the career paths of the two artists grew separately on two opposite sides of the globe, while their creative worlds evolved along with their life journeys. Dhar went on to pursue her doctoral research on Landscape as an Expression in Traditional Indian Paintings, followed by a long career teaching art history at Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, India, while Sengupta’s art and teaching that started in Hyderabad and New Delhi in India, eventually took her to the other side of the globe, in Seattle, California, and New Mexico, USA, where she has taught studio art and art appreciation at the New Mexico State University-Alamogordo for eight years. Currently she lives in Las Cruces, where she has been presenting lectures, workshops, exhibits, and community-based interdisciplinary art-forms often with a focus on multicultural experiences that emphasize human, cultural and environmental connectedness through creativity.

The two separate bodies of work featured for this first exhibit are a curated compilation of small to medium size paintings, illustrating how their works have evolved in parallel, over the years. Their art grew separately through these decades, yet remained rooted in their beginnings of being nurtured in the idyllic natural settings of a small university town and its pristine yet carefree surroundings of rural India that existed before the rapid changes brought on by globalization.

Decades later, the two artists rediscover the parallels and contrasts in their art, as they revisit their sense of connectedness to the natural world. The two separate bodies of paintings reflect their concerns for the outward changes in the natural environment worldwide, as well as the changes and transformations within, resulting from their travels through the seasons of life.