Born in India and currently residing in California, Kajal Zaveri’s eastern and western experiences meld together as one in her warm figurative paintings. Universal themes of belonging, heritage, spirituality and sense of self come alive in her free-flowing, uninhibited artwork.
But art wasn’t the first vocation for this talented painter, who switched careers within the last few years to pursue her true passion for painting and working as a full-time artist (and mom.)
“I am largely a self-taught artist who enjoys the lack of any rules in art and painting,” she states on her website. “I love the freedom of big, bold, tactile strokes and the multi-layering oils allow.”
Kajal says her landscapes are inspired by nature and its limitless horizons and wide open landscapes. In the Distance, below, makes the perfect case for this sentiment.
Honey, slate and coffee hues set the stage for this gorgeous autumn painting which features, across a golden field of flattened grass, a grove of darkened woodlands. Spindly trees here and there attempt to reach lazily for the muted sky, but all-in-all, it’s a quiet, bleak atmosphere perfectly capturing the impending doom of a blustery winter
Symphony on the Waterfront clearly has a superb composition, with water weaving in and out of the dense forest in the background. Water has a will of its own, and Kajal is showing us the many directions it has independently chosen.
This painting is the perfect example of how Kajal embraces the flowing nature of oils. For this particular piece, she stuck with primary colors and alternated between cool and warm hues, finding blissful harmony with each.
Swaths of white stretch out in all directions like fog settling over the water, distorting the happy colors into nothing more than faint smudges and keeping the viewer desperately wishing he or she could see what lies out in deeper waters or woodland.
This last painting, entitled Sound of Silence, is harder for me to decipher. In its abstraction, I can see sky, sand and water. However, even more so, I see the crushing weight of water—right in the depths of it—as a diver might see as he or she swims farther and farther down until swallowed by waves of brilliant blue.
Upon descending into the heart of the aquatic landscape, sight blurs away until all you can see are dense layers of hazy water swirling every which way. It’s a scary, yet exhilarating feeling, and one with which I’m glad Kajal could provide me.
Although not featured here, Kajal has also created beautiful representations of her Indian heritage in an online portfolio labeled Soulscapes. I urge you to visit her website and explore those as well.
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