A parallel between mountains and diamonds

PAINTING EXHIBITION

From being a jewellery designer to a postgraduate in Business Management, Yogendra Sethi prefers to call himself an artist.

His love for mountains as well as diamonds is very much reflected in his canvas. Apparently, his paintings are amalgamations of the strength of the mountains and the glitter of the diamonds.

The current collection — Diamond Soul — blends his core philosophy with spirituality. Each painting depicts the excellence of his skills and presents innovation and a fresh perspective. Each acrylic on canvas, which has always been his favourite medium, seems to reflect his personal love for nature and a deep sense of spirituality.

Sethi, who hails from Indore, is an acclaimed jewellery designer. His fascination for painting started at an early age and he used to paint landscapes in transparent watercolours whenever he had spare time. In fact, almost every weekend was spent cycling and looking for that perfect spot to paint.

“I could sit for hours with my textured paper and watercolour tubes”, he says about his budding passion. After obtaining a Master’s degree in Fine Arts in 1973 from Indore School of Fine Arts, he went to Berkeley, California for an MBA. His landscapes too moved from traditional to contemporary and conceptual as he explored the vast expanse of nature in the US.

Later, as he worked with colour gems and observed their qualities closely, an idea took seed from which was born a new form of art which was very unique and thought-provoking. Nature that he had loved to paint throughout his life, had taken on a new form of life in his paintings.

The strokes, the lines, the colours were that of a mountain, rocks or nature, but at the same time, they resembled human figure or a group of people - all dynamic and active. Brilliant as a diamond, these prismatic forms speak to us, “make us wonder and give us energy, joy and positivity”, as he puts it.

The artist got into jewellery designing and created many masterpieces for various renowned brands, courtesy his passion for colours and design. Pieces from his collection have been exhibited at art galleries across the world and worn by several Bollywood divas and American television hosts like Sharon Osbourne, Melanie Brown and Oprah Winfrey have been spotted wearing his pieces.

The exhibition is on view till today at Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre, from 11 am to 7pm.