Lot Essay
During the first half of the 1990's, Jayashree Chakravarty lived and worked in France. In this work, completed in 1994, we see the re-emergence of the human figure, which had been absent during her earlier periods of landscape painting. However, Chakravarty's previous reliance on naturalism has been supplanted by a patterned and androgynous figure. Suggestions of flowers, trees, houses, castles and forts surface from textured layers of paint and the artist skillfully reveals and conceals forms with a single stroke of the paintbrush. In addition to the main image, the surface is covered with intricate markings - indications of cartography, jagged lines of a heart monitor, botanical drawings, road signs, calligraphy, and graffiti - all held in a delicate balance.