Washington based Gallery Plan B hosts Delna Dastur

Washington based Gallery Plan B hosts a joint exhibition featuring works by Kermit Berg and Delna Dastur. The former presents his series of images ‘Tokyo Night Office’, shot just before the recent, shattering earthquakes. The multi-layered photos document the built environ, apparently bathed in light of varying intensity, as is evident.

On the other hand, Delna Dastur is influenced by the brilliance of captivating colors, which surrounded her during her childhood spent in India. Her paintings, complex in content and also the mediums used, exude the intensity of her commitment as an artist, while depicting the subject matter.

She uses an array of mediums in her canvases: an initial layer of paint and soft pastels; subsequent stamping by using wooden textile blocks along with rubber stamps; later, texture is added with gels, pastes, clear gessoes etc and transfers are added, thus another layer to her work, which is then finished with charcoal.

Raised in Mumbai, she received her degree from the University of Mumbai. She moved to the US in 1969 for her B.A. (art history) at Wellesley College, Massachusetts. After completing her graduation, the artist relocated to Virginia, to pursue her M.F.A. (oil painting) at American University, Washington DC.

No surprise, Delna Dastur art centers itself around two extremely different locations –a high-rise apartment balcony in the city of Mumbai and the other a tranquil, tree-shaded studio in her Northern Virginia home. She reveals, “Whether I work in the States or India, it makes little difference to what I depict on a canvas. I get drawn to the brilliance of the colors that surrounded me during my childhood.”

Over the years as I have developed as an artist, I realized that the process of art making intrigues me as much as the subject matter itself. I’m never satisfied with one medium exclusively and tra to combine several...”