Artist Lizarani Mangaraj transforms her ideas on visual communication of human behaviour into artwork (above). Telegraph pictures

Bhubaneswar, July 14: In her pursuit to understand human nature, artist Lizarani Mangaraj has explored novel ways and created a collection of interesting artworks. The youngster, who works in Delhi, shared her ideas in a discussion with eminent artists as well young art students of the city during Kala Darshan held last week.

Lizarani, an alumnus of the Applied Art Department of BK College of Art, worked on visual communication of human psychology for a project at the College of Art, Delhi, where she is currently pursuing her post-graduation.

“Discussing with other artists and reading a lot of material on human behaviour, I found that the gestures and postures of the hand of a person talk a lot about what’s going on in the mind of the person. I picked this up to visually communicate the various moods of a person,” said the young artist who exhibited her works recently in Delhi.

In Lizarani’s works one finds a mix of photographs, paintings and graphics depicting different moods of people. To portray a thinking or confused frame of mind of a person, she has used a fisted hand closed in the palm of the other hand. Similarly, to express victory or happiness, she has used the picture of two-fisted hands in the air.

“I took help from some manuals of Odissi dance and a Bharatnatyam dancer friend to understand different meanings depicted by the various postures of hand in dance. I also used this in my work,” said Lizarani.

When asked by eminent artists such as Chintamani Biswal or Tarakant Parida, about the tattoo prints she used on the hands of her artworks, Lizarani said that this was where she took help of graphics and printed words and their synonyms depicting the respective mood.

The youngster received appreciation from senior artists at the event held at Orissa Modern Art Gallery.

“It was very interesting to see the youngster use innovative concepts. I really liked her work illustrating the fashionable or modern people wherein the posture of hands she used was that of a stylish rapster. She has also used impressive colour combinations like pink for a thoughtful mood, and purple to showcase the trendy person,” said artist Meenaketan Pattnaik.

At present, Lizarani is working on a series with Orissa’s culture as the subject. “That will be a collage of elements that can truly and in a fascinating way represent Orissa’s traditions. I’m still working on it to give a new dimension to these elements that can look attractive,” she said.