Brahmanda – Chaos & Creation, oil/pigments on wood

The word for universe in sanskrit is Brahma-anda. Brahmin aur Brahm in short is the word for the supreme consciousness, the closest english word being God. So brahmanda literally means God-Egg. I find this very fascinating. It is an egg, not an hatched egg. Egg though has life, it is just potential. Until the very moment it is hatched, that potentiality remains just that. Why would they call it an egg, if it is already hatched? By hatched I mean this creation, us, living beings, plants-animals, the planets, meteors, the stars and the black holes.

This painting is a pondering on this thought. There is darkness, but there is light or the potential of light. There is chaos. But there is order on the horizon. It is painted on a wooden plank which got from a general store in a remote village in Himachal. It was in the earlier days used to write with a chalk by primary school kids. It is called a takhti (तख्ति) in hindi and urdu. The texture is from vibhuti bhasm. Bhasm is a kind of ash made from certain things by a certain process. It is used in many hindu religious rites. What I find interesting is that bhasm is devoid of any life. The lengths which the process of making bhasm goes to, I think that the whole purpose of that is to remove all traces of life from it. What was their before life, and my answer is bhasm. I used my own refined linseed oil with the bhasm to create the ‘paint’. The other colors are store bought oil paints.

I vacillate. Between mythologies and science. Chaos and creation. Big bang or the unhatched cosmic egg. This painting is mysteries shrunk to 15 by 6.5 inches.