India and its incredible water temples and palaces have been the inspiration behind this body of work. I wanted to create a sacred building in the water, its own kingdom which is loosely based on the lake palace in Udaipur. Some of the pieces are dutch leaf background with paper cut buildings standing out silhouetted against the background. A small relic to the inspiring architecture, people and culture of India.
Several of the pieces have rich ultra marine backgrounds with the glinty, gold leaf palace island in front.The palace kingdom is made up of intricate details influenced by the Golden temple in Amaritsa and the palaces in the lakes of Udaipur. The Golden temple has come up in several commissions that I have worked on in the last few years and I have had a chance to sketch, study and come up with an artistic version of it and have become very drawn by its beauty, elaborabate details and how it reflects into the water. Interesting fact is that they apparently feed 100000 people a day from the building making it one of the largest community kitchen in the world. It must be one of the reasons it is always so busy with people clothed in incredible colours and ornate fabrics. Seeing it at night looks impressive like a shining otherworldly vision from the darkness.
