You might call painter Angeli Sowani a current affairs junkie. Two years ago, after the Tsunami left a trail of destruction in its wake, she began painting about the devastation. Some of her other canvases a year later included references to the London Underground bombings. And each morning she scours through the newspapers searching for inspiration. “I try to read newspapers a lot as I get subjects from daily news,” she says.

The reference books of the art world list Angeli Sowani as an Indian/UK painter. That’s because she was born in India and her father was Indian and mother British. She was born and brought up in Agra and later studied graphic art at the National Institute of Design (NID) in Ahmedabad. And, in the last two decades she has lived in Kathmandu, Bangkok, Hong Kong and now England. She has done three solo shows in Britain in recent years. Two years ago she was one of the top artists on show at the prestigious Harmony Art Show in Mumbai.

The Tsunami resulted in a series appropriately called Out of the Blue that was on show recently at the Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai. One canvas titled A Momentous Day, depicts the monstrous swell of the turbulent sea which fills up almost all the area. Another, Hindsight depicts a man standing with one arm outstretched and the water swirling around upto his chest. “Though life came to a standstill because of this natural disaster, yet we all moved on. It was all so moving that I immediately picked up my brush to make these canvases.”

But Out of the Blue also touches other traumatic events of our time like the Underground bombings that took place last July in London and the ongoing Iraq War, which has left a continuing trail of death and destruction. Sowani’s intention in all these works is to convey the human reactions to these tragic events.

Sowani has moved frequently and each shift has made its impression in the form of different splashes of colour on her canvases. After finishing from NID, Sowani shifted to Nepal where she was involved in an UNICEF project with potters to encourage the growth of their art and craft. After a short stint in Kathmandu, she moved to Thailand where she started painting and her first show called Beginnings was held there in 1995 at the Alliance Francaise.

With each move came new experiences and visual impressions and Sowani feels that every change of scene has helped her mature as an artist. So when she shifted to Hong Kong in 1998, it helped her to brush up on the techniques in many different ways. Her stay in Hong Kong opened her eyes to other things as well. She soaked in the art and culture of the region and also imbibed new artistic techniques.

The result was that her paintings began to be infused with an Indo-Chinese feel. She borrowed techniques and images from Chinese ancestral paintings which dominated her Ancestral Mantra series. She explains, “In my canvases, I tried to fuse eastern and western sensibilities. I used certain Hindu and Buddhist symbolisms in my paintings.”

Subsequently, she and her management consultant husband Viswanathan Sowani shifted to England and settled in the southern English town of Winchester. She has two children Soumya (22) and Ayesha (18). Sowani has her husband Vishwanathan to thank for who’s been her greatest pillar of strength. In fact, he takes an active interest in his work and sees to it that Angeli gets the right price for her paintings.

In England, once again her surroundings manifested themselves in her canvases. The architecture of its cathedrals caught her attention and much of the inspiration behind her work today comes from here.

“I was inspired by the flagstones and the interplay of light and shade in the interior of the cathedrals. Also fascinating were the tree-lined streets of Winchester,” she says. The stained glass windows of the cathedrals also form an intrinsic part of her paintings. The result is her Flagstone Mantra series of paintings which was born out of her experience in these cathedrals. In this series she once again fuses the English experience with Hindu motifs and other reminders of her Indian influences.

Working in mediums like oil, charcoal, mixed media, ink and sindoor, Sowani says that she finds subjects for her work from what she sees around her daily. Although she has moved into more abstract forms of art, her new paintings retain the exploratory spirit, bright colours and visual calm of her earlier works.

Sowani has participated in several exhibitions worldwide and made her artistic mark in each city she has lived in. She has held eight solo exhibitions held in Hong Kong’s Rotunda Gallery, London’s King’s Road Gallery and Chang Gallery in Bangkok. She has also participated in over 20 group exhibitions, including The 50th Anniversary of Independence show in Hong Kong, The London Art Show, The Harmony Show and The Art for God’s Sake exhibition in New Delhi’s Habitat Centre.

The language of her painting is understated. Sowani derives inspiration from the old school of artists like Tyeb Mehta, Jehangir Sabavala and M.F. Husain. But belonging to the contemporary art scene, she recognises that the Indian art scene is buzzing with activity and new ideas are constantly coming to the fore. “Though I stay in England, I can see that artists in India are doing extremely well and the galleries are buzzing with good work by Indian artists,” she says. Apart from art, it’s the world of movies which inspires her a lot. While in London, she loves to catch up on the latest releases.

So what next? Sowani says that her next exhibition will be in England but she hasn’t figured out a theme for it yet. But as she searches for a new theme, she’ll be keeping a sharp eye on the newspapers.

Photograph by Gajanan Dudhalkar