The need to pursue your passion is a strong one, and it only grows stronger! This trio discovered their love for the arts at an early age and have been busy curating their own art in ordinary spaces and on objects. From a wall in a friend’s garden, and another one at an ashram, they have gotten rave reviews. In a recent initiative to take their art to the rest of the city, Lakshmi Priya, Nithin Chandran, and Rashmi Naren began a start-up called M-artini! “To bring forth a cocktail of art,” shares Nithin Chandran, an app developer about the intent behind their initiative.
“We first displayed our artwork at a stall in a flea market which was held at JP Nagar and the response we got from there was amazing”, he says. There is no restriction to the canvas they use, for their work of art. Used bottles, broken glass and plastic discs all get their creative juices flowing and are brought back to life. It all really began for them when they were asked to paint the wall at a friend’s garden. Lakshmi Priya, a writer, elaborates, “A friend reached out to us and the wall was painted a deep mahogany red. We were just excited about having a huge wall as our canvas. It was a great opportunity to showcase our art. The garden wall went on to become a rage and is now fondly called Shiva’s valley as it embodies a painting of Shiva and the sun with solar flares.” Their next wall art project took them to an ashram on the outskirts of the city. Rashmi a pre-primary school teacher says, “We were commissioned to paint the walls of a meditation space. So, we redesigned the seven chakras for them to present it using Indian folk aesthetics.”
Lakshmi says, “M-artini kept us going for our passion. The sense of pride that I have when I see my canvas hanging in someone’s home is beautiful and rewarding.”Even though the three of them have day jobs, M-artini becomes an important part of their weekend. Nithin especially believes that working with Lakshmi and Rashmi has given him more confidence and the trio experiment quite often with their styles. “From the beginning we have agreed on what will make our collaborative work better but the essence remains in being faithful to our designs.”
While Lakshmi Priya and Rashmi Naren prefer a lot of folk and abstract art, Nithin Chandran an avid sketcher inclines towards superheroes and mythical creatures when he draws. They dynamics of this group ensures that their work becomes their own when they collaborate. Rashmi Naren says, “The more involved we are in art, our creativity grows. It is a learning process”
