10 | ART
tal, moving to Welham Girls’ School in Dehradun in her teens. Later, she did her Bachelor’s in fine arts at Lasalle College of the Arts, Singapore. In 2014, soon after graduating, Sahaya discovered pranic healing. “Meditation changed my headspace. The best example I could use
to describe its effect is that it creates a shield of healthy indifference around you – both etheric and mental – where negative thoughts and feelings both internally and externally arrive but do not persist. They bounce off and are replaced with love and kindness,” she says. An abstract artist, Sahaya’s brush
with pranic healing influenced her creative process as well. “Pranic healing is about the science of energy and so are my paintings. Colour is energy and being an abstractionist who deals with colour, for me it is all about understanding various colours through their vibrations and frequencies and grasping their tone, hue, movement, contrast and physiological effects on the human body,” she explains. She goes on, “Pranic healing has also taught me the art of silencing, an important element in observing when and if a painting is complete and how to mute out the noise of unnecessary elements – a process that can be a little tricky since I use a maximalist technique for various entry and exit points in an artwork.” Essentially, Sahaya’s art is an extension of how she copes, understands or fantasises about life. A painting can be over within a week, 10 days or something that she keeps building up in layers over a year, she goes on. “Recently, I’ve cracked this technique using oil, enamel, acrylic paint and spray paint to create mythical landscapes that you can drown in or fly over!” Popular on Instagram, Sahaya’s patrons include the Ambuja NeoJANUARY 2020